Brian O'Donoghue: My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian: Mushing Across Alaska in the Iditarod--The World's Most Grueling Race

One winter day Chad quit on me leaving the lot. He did a complete nose plant, causing half the team to tumble over him. I assumed that he was injured, but we never found anything physically wrong. It was Golden Dog’s spirit that needed nursing thereafter. And the Coach’s new approach appeared to be working.

About 15 miles out, I wasn’t paying close attention when Chad lunged onto a side trail. I stopped and turned the team around. Next, emerging from a winding slough, I wasn’t sure which direction to take on the Chena River. Which way to Madman’s house? Upstream? Downstream? Everything looked so different covered by the recent dumps of snow.

Chad glanced back, impatient. “Haw,” I said.

I mushed 10 miles along the river, searching for the familiar trail crossing until it was unmistakably clear that I’d guessed wrong. Sighing, I again turned the team around. The snow was soft and deep. The dogs sank and thrashed about in the powder. I waded to the front of the team, then sank to my armpits pulling Chad back toward the trail. A fight broke out between Bo and the normally unflappable Skidders. Back on the hard-packed trail, I separated the two scrappers. Bo was in a surly mood. So I paired Raven with Chad in lead and ran the big troublemaker alone. After stopping for a snack, we backtracked along the river, chasing the setting sun. By nightfall I was lost again, but tried to hide it from the dogs.

At a loss, I directed Chad and Raven up a side trail. We soon neared a dog lot illuminated by blinding outdoor lights. Normally, I would have retreated; people tend to defend their privacy aggressively in Alaska. But I was ready to beg for directions. Our arrival set the dogs chained outside the cabin barking furiously. The cabin door swung open and, to my utter amazement, out stepped Mike Madden.

“Madman, this is your house?”

“Whose backyard did you think you were in, O’D?”

We’d been on the trail five hours. I should have camped and given the dogs a real meal, followed by several hours of rest, before returning home. But I was on a schedule. So I snacked the dogs and then started them back.

The river was braided with snowmachine trails. Raven and Chad weren’t meshing. When they weren’t bumping each other, the leaders were wrestling through their neckline, trying to pull each other along different threads of the interwoven trail.

Even so, we were making decent time when I blundered yet again by ordering the team down a side trail. Within a mile I realized the mistake and halted the team for another turnaround. That was strike three for Chad. His confidence in me was shot. Golden Dog buried his head in the snow and wouldn’t budge. I dragged him forward several times, roughly standing him on his feet. He cooperated that far. But when I shouted, “All right,” the cue to move out — Chad sat down.

I tried Raven in single lead. No way. Her tail drooped, and the little princess tried to hide underneath the swing dogs, creating an immediate tangle. I tried using Gnat and Cricket together. The litter mates cowered. No one wanted the wheel on this doomed ship — not with me in charge.

In training sled dogs, you want to steer them into doing the right thing, while minimizing confusion and discouragement. Building stamina isn’t nearly as crucial as instilling confidence through repetition and positive reinforcement, teaching dogs that they can do whatever you, the musher, ask. By building on each success, gradually asking the team to go farther and faster, the dogs develop faith in their all-knowing driver. That was the theory. From the first August night we took our dogs out on a cart — and Chad dug up a yellow jackets’ nest in the staging area — training seldom went smoothly.

My reversals had undermined the confidence of every dog out here, and it was the wrong night for a leadership crisis. Rainy, Rat, Casey, and Harley, any one of whom might have bailed me out, were sitting at home. Hitched to this gang line I had Chad, Raven, Cricket, and Gnat: our resident head case and three happy trotters — good for leading so long as it was fun, which it wasn’t tonight.

I placed Chad back in lead, thinking he might cooperate after a reasonable break. He was, after all, still Deadline Dog Farm’s main dog.

So we sat.

Twenty minutes later, a headlamp appeared.

“How’s training going,” said Scott, a local musher preparing for the Quest.

“Fine until tonight,” I said, a dark edge to my voice.

Chad loves to chase. He perked up and followed Scott to the Winter Trail, a heavily traveled mushing and snowmachine highway, up to five feet wide in places, cutting through the forest northeast of Fairbanks. With the familiar alley in view, I bid the other musher good-bye. Crying “Haw,” I sent Chad into a hard left turn. We were home free.

A few miles later, Chad dove down another side spur for no apparent reason. I didn’t dare stop him. Nothing is more frustrating than having a dog team quit on you. We were rolling. I didn’t care where. The trail lead to a subdivision road. The sled whipped sideways, careening off berms, as the dogs loped down the icy, hard-packed road. I was hoping we’d come across another trail, but the subdivision road spilled onto Chena Hot Springs, the busiest road in the entire area. We were within a few miles of home, and I considered making a dash for it. But it was icy and dark. The sight of an oncoming dog team might send a car or truck spinning into us. I could lose the entire team in an instant.

Stomping the hook into the snow, I walked up front, gripped Chad by the collar, and turned the team around one more time. Chad shrank at my touch and wouldn’t even look at me. The other dogs weren’t much happier. On a whim, I tried Skidders in lead. The old stud immediately took advantage of his freedom to circle back and sniff the girls. Nice try. And for our next act.

I bedded the team in a sheltered spot near the main road. Cyrus, an 18-month-old pup we’d just acquired from Rattles, was bewildered. He remained on his feet, eager to continue. Five minutes later, he was still whining anxiously. I knelt down in the snow and stroked his tight belly, settling him down at last.

Turning off my headlamp, I was struck by the brilliant stars painting the sky. It was one of those nights when you see dazzling, ghostly depths, hinting at mysteries no mere human will ever grasp. Mushing forces you to spend time outside. That was one of the sport’s unexpectedly rewarding aspects. Whether it’s watching a woodpecker digging away on a trunk, or catching the sunset through trees ablaze with clumps of ice, some sort of rare experience is always waiting in Alaska’s outdoors.

I was sitting there on the snow berm, marveling at the stars, when I heard Mowry’s truck chugging up the hill. The sportswriter was on his way home after a late shift. I flagged him down.

The Coach was disgusted by my incompetence. “You’re just like Chad,” Mowry said, as we loaded the dogs into the truck.

Revolting bloody soup filled our bathtub.

“Christ,” I said, recoiling from the fermenting atrocity. “What the hell is it?”

“I’m making honey balls. It’s one of Joe’s inventions.”

Picture 100 pounds of raw chopped beef, 20 pounds of honey, 2 gallons of corn oil, 2 pounds of bonemeal, and other assorted Redington spices — slopped a foot deep.

“I don’t know, Bri,” said Mowry, stirring the mess with a broken hockey stick. “It seems sort of gooey.”

We’d already spent two days cutting meat and stuffing sacks with provisions for Mowry’s first Iditarod. He grabbed a handful and tried handpacking it into a baseball-sized glob. Meat goo oozed through Tim’s fingers. We scooped a couple bucketfuls and took them out on the porch. There, we dabbed globs of the bloody muck on the surface of flattened garbage bags, hoping it might freeze into something usable. By morning, the honey balls had changed. The Mowth and I now had a porch full of half-frozen cow pies, run together like cookies baked too close on the sheet.