On Saturday, even though we had been warned that conditions would probably not be good for a dog sled ride, we went out to Husky Power for the kennel tour.

To a lot of people, this would be just listening to people talk about an obscure sport and petting a couple of nice dogs. To me this was like a baseball fan touring the club house of her favorite team, or a NASCAR fan going behind the scenes at the track, allowed to do everything but drive the car. The Hub took a lot of photographs – I promise to try to get some up on the site soon.

Linda and Mike, who run Husky Power, spent a lot of time in Alaska....

where the sport of dog sledding, as we know it today, originated. It’s all an outgrowth of the gold rush – think Call of the Wild. It was fascinating to hear them talk about their experience working in the large kennels of competitive racers in Alaska and Canada. We talked quite a bit about the lineage of the dogs, how dogs like huskies and malamutes and Chinooks came to be. The bottom line is this: over a thousand years of evolution and breeding have produced beautiful, intelligent dogs who were born to run. They’re dogs, sure, good dogs, fun dogs….but comparing them to a dog who has been bred to sit on laps and keep people company is like comparing your car to one that runs a stock car race.

I make this point because a lot of people say that dog sledding is a cruel sport, that the dogs are run beyond their endurance, and they’d never want to run like that anyway. Of course, in any activity that people get involved in there are people who want to win at any cost. For example, many of the larger races now have prohibited dogs who don’t naturally have a double coat – that’s because in a quest for faster dogs some people bred too many hounds into the lines, and hounds don’t have a double coat, so race conditions would be too harsh for them

But the breeds that have hauled people, equipment, game, and other such things on sleds over the vast tundra since time out of mind don’t have a problem staying warm. They’re more likely to have a problem staying cool as they run. And it’s no problem getting these dogs to run. Getting them to STOP: that’s the problem. Linda showed us two different types of anchors used to dig into the ice and snow to prevent dog teams from taking off without their musher.

We met each dog, one by one. When you go into the kennel, it’s important that you respect the system that the dogs have figured out. They have a leader, and you greet that dog first. In this case, the leader was the stately Zsa-Zsa, a stunningly beautiful dog with a dignity and queenly grace that you kind of had to experience to understand. She sat up on her dog house as requested, posed for pictures, and accepted our admiration and scratches behind the ears as her due. Each other dog had distinct personality traits. They looked at us with interest, as if we were as much a novelty for them as they were for us.

They were visibly disappointed when it became clear that we couldn’t run – conditions would be too bad for the dog’s paws. There was no reason to risk an injury.

We also learned a lot about the types of sleds that are used, what they’re made out of and how they’re put together. They have to be lashed together at many points because the sled itself has to be flexible enough to negotiate turns and rough terrain. Many of the traditional sleds are made out of ash, a durable, flexible wood, but some are now made with synthetic materials. They’re so light they’re like little wicker baskets – it’s people and equipment that are heavy. These dogs, we were told, trained by pulling a person around on an ATV. They did it for fun.

Linda explained how old dogs and puppies fit into the life of a racing kennel. Dogs that are too old to go on the long runs they’re used to are not considered useless and don’t go into lonely retirement. Instead, they go on shorter runs with the puppies, who, of course couldn’t keep up on the longer runs either. The older dogs teach the younger ones how to act in the harness, help them pick up on the voice commands, which are the foundation of sledding. In a dog pack, everybody has a job, a purpose and a meaning. Nobody is left behind. They all go together or they don’t go at all.

Sure you could get a dog like this and bring him into your home as a pet, and with work and patience, you could probably have a fine experience with a companion animal. But without the knowledge of the heritage of the sledding breeds many people would wind up with an overheated, frustrated, distressed dog with no outlet for his energy.

Mike and Linda’s dogs are somewhat larger than those you’d see running any of the big races. After all, these guys are on the tour circuit, not the race circuit. But it was still the wonderful experience of interacting with creatures who live another life. Their intelligence allows them to communicate with people, yet they are just as answerable to some of the deepest, and noblest, animal instincts. They run along the edges where the civilized world meets the wild, and terribly fortunate humans are lucky to ride along behind them, in the hushed cool places where the demands of modern life hardly cast a shadow.

Long may they run!