November 10, 2008

• Dog Racing Season Comes Soon

  The first of this winter’s distance races will run next month.  It is the Sheep Mountain 150, a mid-distance race, and one of the qualifying races for the long-distance Iditarod and Yukon Quest. 

  The upper end of the Susitna Valley, where I live, is a popular place for sled dog training because it has lots of open space where dogs, their noise and smell are tolerated, snow usually comes early, and we are accessible by road and relatively close to some of the conveniences of civilization.  My front window overlooks a back road with very sparse traffic, an ideal place for dog training in warmer weather.  A month or so ago, before we’d had much snow, I watched at least three separate teams go by several times a day, at various times of day and night, pulling 4-wheel ATVs. 

  Now, those same dogs are pulling sleds and are no longer confined to the road system, so I don’t see them unless I’m out in the car and catch sight of a team and musher running along the roadside ditch or on a frozen creek as I cross a bridge.  That is always a thrill for me.  As my regular readers know, I’m not generally a sports fan, but I’m a sled dog racing fanatic.  This passion is not something I really understand, but I suspect that it results from my lifelong love for dogs, and from being empathetic and so closely surrounded by many mushers and their dog yards — so close that I can hear the excited barking from several of them, in various directions, at feeding time.

  I won’t be blogging daily about the sport until early in 2009, when the Yukon Quest and Iditarod are run.  Today, I wanted to share a story about one of the rookie mushers planning to run this year’s Sheep Mountain 150, Ashley Irmen (Image by Joseph Robertia from the Peninsula Clarion).  

  Ashley Irmen’s team is composed of rescued dogs, in common with that of another young woman, Zoya Denure, who ran her first Iditarod last year with a team of shelter dogs.  Zoya is expecting her first baby, any moment now, and may not be racing this season.

  Ashley’s Ruca Dog Kennel, named for the kennel’s first resident, includes many dogs rescued from shelters and a few others such as those she took in after their owner, Martina Delp, was killed when the tree she was felling hit a power line.

  Ashley Irmen tells the kennel’s story herself here, with one of the cutest dog-and-human pictures I’ve ever seen, of Ashley in a recliner with a white husky on her lap.

  

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