Photo by Andrew Podrygula, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota, USA
Becoming Dog
Petra, looking for some love after breaking new trail.
but Petra clearly had a little more mystique than the rest. Finally, I was able to calm Petra down enough to get her harness back on. I looked up at Lissy. She had been silent the whole time, but now she smiled—the biggest and brightest smile I had seen yet—and nodded at me, as if saying, “You did good, kid. You did good.” I guess I was on my way to becoming a musher after all. As we pulled into Lissy’s backyard, she gave me a high-five. “Congratulations,” she said. “You did it.” I didn’t quite understand what she meant. I did what? I completed my solo trip? I hadn’t taken any more spills? I didn’t want it to mean what I thought it meant—that I had become a musher—because that would mean that my training was over. That would mean the end. It wouldn’t be goodbye forever. I would probably mush again later in the week, but since I had grown so close to these dogs
during my training, I didn’t want to leave them. I loved them, maybe not as much as Lissy did, but in my own way I did love them. After three weeks, I knew each and every one of their names and could even point out certain differences and characteristics in each dog. Uma and Moki were the playful giants, strong and athletic, but lacking in the brain department. Ziggy was the troublemaker that none of the dogs really liked, but all she wanted was attention. Tinder was the big brother and one of the alpha males. His sister, Glassy, was much more complacent and shy than he was. I could go on forever. I realized that every one of them was magical. Over the past few weeks, the dogs had let me in on their secret. They took me on an adventure to another world—a hidden place, a place that one can only get to on a dog sled. Perhaps the magic was the silent splendor of the woods, or the soft pitter-pattering of the dogs’ feet on the snow-packed trail, or the occasional bark that meant, “Let’s go!” 7