Dog sled racing was born from a logical method of transportation in the North and has now taken on a life of its own as an international sport.
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 16/01) - Forget the musher, ignore the super-light sleds, racing and winning is "all about the dogs," says champion musher Buddy Streeper.
"You gotta love the dogs."
Streeper, 19, currently ranked fifth in the world and son of former world-champion Terry Streeper, peered into his cup of coffee, meditating on the racing season that started last fall when they left their home in Fort Nelson with high hopes and a truck load of dogs.
They were not disappointed. The dogs did well on the Alaska circuit and finished on a winning and profitable note in Yellowknife and Inuvik.
Streeper teams mushed by Buddy and Craig Williams of Yellowknife took first and second at the Canadian Championship Derby and repeated that performance at the Muskrat Jamboree, running away with $7,300.
The purses cover road expenses, advertise the Streeper kennels and its products: champion racing dogs and the specialized food that fuels them.
The dogs waited in portable kennel that looks like a miniature apartment complex towed behind a weathered green crewcab, their narrow muzzles pressed close to the mesh doors as they sampled their newest surroundings from familiar beds of straw.
It was the Streepers' first visit to Inuvik, where the local mushers' club put up a rich pot of prize money. They were on the road for 45 hours from Yellowknife, watching the Dempster Highway unroll its twin tracks across a vast, snowy canvass; stopping every two hours to pit-stop the dogs.
"It was nice to see lights," said Buddy.
Northern connection
Racing sled dogs were born in the late winter festivals that drew mushers to remote communities. But the link between the Streepers' swift, lean animals and the traditional working dog of the North is a tenuous one.
Inuit still tie dogs to a heavy qamutiq, fanned out on separate lines rather than one behind the other, to carry meat and fish. They dwarf their canine cousins who pull 25-pound aluminum sleds on waxed runners.
"I would not even call them sled dogs," Streeper said. "They are working dogs and ours are sport dogs. They are about three times the size."
Racing circuits are scattered all over the world. The Streepers compete in Alaska where promotion and hype have made dog racing a major event.
Tailed by helicopters and TV cameras races compete on tracks where "they put snow down on the street and say go. To stop you basically have to put your snow hook around a parking metre."
Although the Yellowknife race is a big one, Streeper said most communities in the Northwest Territories are not keeping up with the evolution of the sport.
"We don't race with toboggans anywhere else in the world and if these guys want to get better you have to drop the toboggan rule," he said.
Before the finish line
Everything in the dog mushers' world is keyed to the race, but there is a lifetime of patience that comes before the thrill of speeding over frozen ground on whistling sled runners.
Dogsled racing has taken the Streeper family across the North to Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, to Asia and Europe where the sport is treated like science.
Swedish teams now dominate mushing. Their supremacy is built on the addition of German short-haired pointers to the bloodlines of traditional huskies.
"They created a super dog," Streeper said.
The Streepers followed suit. They have about 60 German Pointer-cross puppies waiting to take their place in harnesses and a dozen three-year-olds already carving through race courses.
Like racing cars, the dogs run on a special fuel. The Streepers mix meat and ingredients such as wheat germ or fish oil to get the right blend of nutrients. The concoction is then sent to Cornell University in New York to be tested for fat and protein content.
"The professor of veterinary medicine there is a dog musher," Streeper said.
Future
Streeper was born into dog racing.
"Me and my sister would hook of team up of older dogs or puppies when we were little," he said. "It didn't matter if we went three miles or 20 miles, we probably stopped every half mile just to pet them."
Streeper is currently ranked fifth in the world. He has an eye on the next world-championship derby in Norway and is looking beyond.
"I can see it in the Olympics someday," Streeper said. "I don't know when but it will be."
