March 4, 2004

• Almost Iditarod Time Again

  
  

  

  
  

  Yesterday in Wasilla, vets were making sure that all the dogs entered in this year’s race to Nome are healthy and fit to run 1,000 miles.  The man holding that uncomfortable blue-eyed husky’s muzzle is a volunteer, George Stroberg, DVM, of Denver, CO.  The musher trying to reassure the athlete is Rick Larson of Sand Coulee, MT.  He is one of  87 mushers set to “start” on Saturday.  That “start” is the ceremonial run down Fourth Avenue in Anchorage.  Sunday’s restart when the race really begins won’t be in Wasilla again this year, but farther up this valley in Willow, only about 23 miles from here.  Again the reason for moving the restart north and up in elevation is lack of snow in Wasilla.  The lake ice is melting down there.  I was thinking that the ceremonial start might be worth repairing that lead wire to our TV antenna, but maybe it would be just as easy and more fun to drive into Willow for the restart.

  
  

  Dogs have been in the news a lot lately.  Not just the sled dogs preparing for the race, but others.  Pebbles, who ran from would-be rescuers after surviving an icy swim, which her owner didn’t survive when he drove a rental truck off the ice into the water of Skilak Lake, was found by a woman who lives near the lake.  The man’s kid who was riding with him also survived and is now out of the hospital.  Likewise the man’s wife and her two passengers, who followed him into the lake in a separate vehicle.

  
  

  Less fortunate was another dog, whose name doesn’t appear in the news story.   It was a German shepherd owned by Theresa Keppler of Anchorage, who got it from a local animal rescue group.  When 19-year-old stranger Tommie Earl Smith broke into her home, high on an antihistamine similar to Coricidin and angry over a fight with his girlfriend, Keppler was able to break his hold on her and run out, barefooted.  After that, neighbors and police heard the dog’s yelps.  The dead dog and a lot of blood were found when they finally subdued the young man.

  
  

  I can hear my dog, Koji crunching a rawhide chewy over on the bed right now.  I try to understand what might make someone do what that kid did in Anchorage, but I just don’t get it.  Around here we cheer when we hear stories like that of Pebbles, and another dog whose name we don’t recall who also survived an icy swim.  She is a kinky-tailed black Labrador retriever whose owner’s boat broke up and sank in a storm last month.  No sign of the man’s body was found, only some debris from his boat.  Then weeks later someone who had known him spotted the dog from his boat, on a beach, and called it by name.  The dog swam out to his boat, “So fast,” he said, “that it threw a wake,” behind it.  That dog was skinny, dirty and had a hurt paw, but is expected to be okay.

  
  

  

  
  

  Another front-page story today, along with the Iditarod build-up, concerned a line of sled dogs, the Hedlund huskies, that might have died out if not for the devotion of Rose Hedlund, in photo at left, and her nephew Nels Alexie.  Rose, an Athabascan Indian, and her late husband Nels Hedlund, a Yup’ik Eskimo, bred the dogs over the last 50 years.

  
  

  Here is the younger Nels’s story:

  
  

  From the time he was old enough to stand on the runners of a sled, Bethel resident Nels Alexie was taught to treat his dogs with respect. Feed them well, his elders told him. Give them lots of attention. One day, it will pay off.

  
  

  That day came. Some 40 years ago, as a young adult, Alexie was returning home from checking his trapline. It was about this time of year, and mild temperatures made the knee-deep snow punchy and wet. Alexie started to feel sick. After a few hours and still nearly 40 miles from Bethel, he was too weak to stand.

  
  

  So he stopped the team, opened his canvas sled bag and climbed into a sleeping bag. He closed the sled bag, told the dogs to go and fell into a deep sleep. It was just before noon.

  
  

  At 5 p.m., Alexie said, he awoke and peered out of the sled.

  
  

  “The dogs were crossing the mouth of the Johnson River, and they were still going,” he said. “And I could not figure out how in the world they figured out how to go up the hills and through the overflow. They were bringing me home — I was about six miles from home — and they were happy because they knew that something was happening to their master because I never did something like this before.”

  
  

  Alexie said as far-fetched as the story sounds, it is testament that a good dog really is hard to find. That’s why, when he found out his aunt Rose Hedlund was hoping to revive the line of sled dogs she and his uncle Nels had developed over the past 50 years, he was desperate to get one. These dogs, now known as Hedlund huskies, would be descendants of the dogs that saved his life. Hedlunds were versatile, blending several traits. They were fast, though not as speedy as some. They were smart and loyal. They were tough, and their coats were ideal for sub-zero weather. They had the endurance of a marathoner.

  
  

  “They were good dogs,” Alexie said. “Snowmachines are fast but they’re not dependable like dogs. Dogs never break, and snowmachines can’t swim. Dogs, they can swim.”
  

  

  

  • 5:30 pm
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