Dog Sledding in the Summer?

July 9

The Iditarod is the world famous 1000 mile dog sled trek through treacherous
ice and snow starting in Anchorage, Alaska, and runs north to Nome, Alaska.

In 2004, a man named Mitch Seavey was the world champion racer. He and his dog team of 16 Alaskan Huskies drove over the finish line after 9 days of severe cold, and dangerous terrain.

The Seavey family, has been racing in the Iditarod for many years, and own and operate a kennel in Seward where their own dogs, as well as other dogs are trained over the summer for the famous 1000 mile trek. They call it summer camp for the dogs. Even their competitors come to camp to get ready for the winter haul!

The Seavey’s have quite the set up deep in the woods, where they use sleds with wheels to train the dogs for endurance. The cool part of it, is that they take visitors for a 2 mile sled ride through the woods and teach us all about how the dogs are trained and what the Ididerod is like.

Our host was the son of Mitch Seavey, who himself has participated in the race a few times and have also been featured by the Discovery Channel. He is one of 4 boys who grew up deep in the Alaskan woods, training sled dogs, being homeschooled and taking care of both themselves, and their dogs with holistic herbs, organic foods, and homeopathic remedies. (Sounds like the Steeple family!)

The dogs we met and the dogs that pulled our sled through the woods were a combination of Iditerod winners, and dogs who are currently being trained. What a thrill it was to be around these people and these awesome dogs, who by they way are handled with love and affection, and are very friendly with strangers.

The dogs are hand-picked and bred with winners blood lines. Only dogs who love to run are chosen… dogs who aren’t runners, are not trained to run or made to run… they only train dogs who already have the passion to run.

A retired Iditarod Champion greets us as we arrive:

A small portion of the kennel. Suprisingly, the kennel area did not smell like dogs!

All aboard our sled – our musher is from Belgium and has been training and racing for a few years:

We sat and watched in awe while our musher and helpers choose which dogs to harness to our sled:



And at the first voice command, “hike!”, we were off!

The voice command for turning left is “ha!”, for right it’s “gee!”.

The kids got a kick out of seeing a couple of dogs doing the “poo-poo” while still moving. It was quite funny. No picture to show it however.

The lead dog is the dog who obeys the command and leads the team:

The traditional “whoa” stops the team.

At the end of the 2 mile ride, we were invited to pet our team and thank them for a safe return!


And then we went to the puppy kennel! First we visited the youngest pups:



Then we moved on to the older pups, who looked like they were waiting patiently for attention:

One of the pups decides to eat Jades hair!

I guess he really, really liked it!

After visiting the puppies, we were led to an outdoor theatre area where
we saw a real sled, and watched a short movie about the Ididarod:

This is what the mushers have to do to dress the dogs at each check point. Apparently, it is one of the hardest jobs of the race. About every 200 miles there is a check point where the dogs are rested and taken care of. The musher is the only person who can take care his dogs, there is no help at all. Every single dog needs all 4 feet and legs wrapped, and booties changed. This is done while the musher is still dressed in all his layers of clothing because it is done outside in 30-40 degree below zero weather.

Demonstrated by Mitch Seavey’s son himself!

Zach volunteers to be dressed in the parka and garb that mushers wear to keep warm during the 9 day race. This jacket was worn by Mitch Seavey on his championship race!

The hood, if worn correctly, forms a funnel of warm air around the face:

Zach models the perfect musher!