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

Cooley was interrogating the checkers about Herrman. Most of our companions looked as if they were ready to relax for a good spell. I grabbed a cup of instant coffee and headed for the bathroom.

Terhune and I soon strolled back to our dogs.

“Let’s go,” he shouted, reaching for his hook.

“Daisy, Daisy on by!” he said, directing his lead dog past the teams crowding the checkpoint. It was a perfect place for a breakout. The snow was hard packed across a wide area from local traffic, and the trail exiting the village began 100 yards ahead.

The movement of Terhune’s dogs sent other teams into a howling frenzy. Mushers spilled out of the checkpoint. Bedlam ensued. Shouts mixed with barking, while local villagers clapped and cheered, applauding Terhune’s getaway.

I was right behind Jon approaching Gunnar Johnson’s team. But then my dogs bunched up. Bo seized the chance to hump Raven. I leaped off the sled and separated the lovers.

“All right! All right,” I shouted, still intent on following Terhune.

Other mushers were madly pitching gear at their sleds. As we were passing Johnson’s parked sled, a tussle erupted in the middle ranks of my team. Pig, Digger, and Spook all had their teeth locked on a big chunk of meat. Wading into the center of the melee, I ripped the meat free and threw it at Johnson.

“What kind of bullshit is this Gunnar! Leaving meat on the ground next to your sled?”

“It wasn’t on the ground,” he protested. “Your dogs dived inside my sled bag and pulled that meat out.”

“Oh, sorry about that.”

Looking over his shoulder, Terhune watched my dogs seize the meat. He nearly fell off his sled laughing at the resulting mess. So be it, he thought, watching me fall behind.

Daily welcomed the sudden excitement. Lounging in the checkpoint, he had overheard Lenthar talking about staying to do a load of laundry. That was too much. He felt like grabbing the other musher and screaming “LET’S GET OUTTA HERE!” This absurd maneuver of Terhune’s was just the jolt everyone needed.

While I fought for custody of the meat, Chad decided it was his turn to mount Raven. I broke up that love affair before it got started, and quickly got the team rolling. It was too late to gain any advantage. Everybody but Gunnar was already moving out, chasing Terhune. So much for my great escape.

Gunnar and I joined the tail end of the chain leaving Golovin. He was carrying the Red Lantern for once, but that didn’t last. Another tangle halted us dead. This time Digger had pounced on Raven, my disruptive princess of love.

“Go ahead, Gunnar,” I said, leaping off the sled to pull the dogs apart.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Yeah, go for it.”

I had the team lined out in about ten seconds flat. That much I was getting good at.

Terhune couldn’t hold his lead. Never had a chance. Daisy’s trotting speed had dropped to five, maybe six, miles per hour. The others closed in on him less than a mile out from the checkpoint. Terhune cursed to himself. He hated to see this. But there was nothing to be done. Dogs can only do what they can do. Terhune pulled aside and let the faster teams by, watching the smug looks on the faces of every racer who passed him.

“What happened?” I said, shocked to see him parked there.

Terhune shrugged.

I’d been angry with myself for blowing that escape. Yet here we were together in the back of the train again.

“Well, we sure showed them.”

“Yeah,” Terhune growled. “Next time FEED your dogs first.”

The sun was out and it was warm, 20 or 30 degrees above zero.

“At least it’s a nice day,” I yelled back. “I don’t even need … my parka.”

Sharp as an eight-by-ten photo, I recalled my big coat draped over a chair in the checkpoint bathroom. “Son of a bitch,” I gasped, staggered by the magnitude of my screwup. I considered continuing on without it. It was so warm. Nome was so close. One word restored reality: “Topkok.”

The area surrounding the Topkok Hills was one of the most dangerous on the trail. Mushers were sometimes trapped for days on the hillsides, or in the windy valley below. Continuing without that parka put my entire race in jeopardy. I stopped the team and dragged my dogs off the trail, waving Terhune ahead.

“What’re you doing?”

“Left something behind,” I said grimly.

Grabbing the lesbian’s collar, I pulled the team back around and mushed toward Golovin.

What a pisser, thought Daily, watching me turn back. His own dogs were flying, soaring at a previously unimaginable pace behind Bogus. The lead dog appeared to actually smell Nome; Tom didn’t know how else to explain it.

My dogs broke into a joyous lope. Returning to Golovin, an easy three miles back, was obviously a popular idea with the team. I hadn’t even parked when one of the ladies staffing the checkpoint burst through the door with my parka under her arm.

“We found it as soon as you left,” she said. “You didn’t need to come back for it. We would have sent it to White Mountain on a snowmachine.”

I sighed. “Came too far to take that chance.”

Facing the exit trail, I snacked the dogs and petted them, trying to make a game of this latest pilot error. The crew responded as I hoped, wagging their tails, acting perky. But their spirits crumbled when I ordered Harley and Rainy to move out again. The lesbian didn’t want to go at all. Raven’s crotch was suddenly more interesting than anything waiting ahead. Harley froze, torn between my demands and the lure of Raven.

“Go ahead! Go ahead, Harley!” I insisted.

The big dog looked at me, a forlorn expression written on his face, then he lurched ahead, dragging Rainy to work. My dogs stumbled out of Golovin like POWs. Their ears were down. Pauses were frequent. All thirteen dogs had to relieve their bladders, or take smelly dumps, or both. I was the Bad Guy riding the heavy sled.

The accusatory looks didn’t impress me. We were only going eighteen miles. Not a damn one of them was really tired. Hungry, yes. They hadn’t had a hot meal since Elim. But my fine athletes couldn’t be tired, not after that extra break on Little McKinley. They were just disappointed. And I couldn’t blame them for that. I had broken the all-important Deal.

The dogs pulled and I fed them at each checkpoint: that was our unspoken compact, which had been reaffirmed at every stage of the last 1,000 miles. Every stage, that is, until Golovin, where I had broken that trust — twice in a single morning.

My assumption was vindicated as the dogs broke into a lope scenting White Mountain. The morning’s betrayal was forgotten. Happy days were here. Ears perked, shoulders pitched forward with effort, Deadline Dog Farm’s finest pulled with abandon. A checkpoint was ahead. Dinner was about to be served, thus reestablishing justice throughout dogdom as they knew it.

“HEP, HEP, HEP.” That simple phrase was all it took. Bogus kicked the team into overdrive, and Tom Daily easily beat everybody else into White Mountain.

Jacked by his team’s performance, Tom spent the next 45 minutes proudly greeting incoming teams. He wasn’t paying attention as the checker, who was late coming down from the lodge, made his rounds.

Daily was bummed when he saw the time sheet later. It had Lenthar arriving first at 11 A.M., March 23. Daily was listed as fourth, adding an unwarranted 36 minutes to his mandatory 6-hour stop.

“Jesus” he said, “you can’t win in this thing.”

I shared Tom’s disappointment in the White Mountain standings. Thanks to my parka snafu, I had arrived 70 minutes behind the closest musher ahead of me, and some two hours behind the Mormiles, Terhune, Daily, and Lenthar. Those were teams I expected to beat; 55 miles didn’t offer much opportunity for a rebound. But a lot could happen. Look at Swenson.