INUVIK - No one was more excited than the dogs.

As mushers wrestled the animals into harnesses, they vibrated and barked and squealed, desperate to run. Wide-eyed children wondered at creatures capable of more nervous energy than themselves as older spectators shared memories of the dogs of their youths.

Musher Andrew Charlie and his dogs take off at the first annual Sunrise Festival dog team race. - Aaron Beswick/NNSL photo

At the Jan. 8 event, five eight-dog teams raced an eight-mile (13-kilometre) course from Inuvik's northern ice road entrance, up a groomed trail around Navy Creek and back.

Volunteers held teams, one at a time, at the start line, letting the frenzied energy go at two-minute intervals on the word of the time keeper. People hopped in their cars to follow the teams up the Mackenzie River ice road.

Marie-Anick Elie finished first, Andrew Charlie only 0.4 seconds behind in second place, Mike Baxter 27 sec-onds behind them in third, Frazer Arey in fourth and Charlie Villeneuve in fifth. Due to the proximity of the first and second place finishers, the first prize purse was split evenly between them.

"It's our first race with the Sunrise Festival - the sport is dying a little bit because we don't have many opportunities to race," said Elie.

Aklavik hosts an annual Boxing Day race, Fort McPherson a New Year's Day race (cancelled this year) and Inuvik has one during the Muskrat Jamboree.

Dog teams, Elie said, consume a lot of time and money.

"You walk the dogs, feed them, clean the yard, groom a trail," said Elie, who has 30 dogs. "It's a passion, but it's never-ending work."

When Elie began mushing a decade ago, it was common for 10 teams to show up for a race. The Sunrise Festival race is an attempt to promote the sport by providing more opportunities for mushers to race and earn some cash. Down the road, Elie would like to see it draw teams from outside the Delta.

In the meantime, the race needs sponsors. First Air made the Sunrise Festival race possible by providing $1,000 - $150 went to gasoline for making the trail and the remaining was prize money.

"We'll provide the volunteers, we just need some money from sponsors. It doesn't even need to be a big amount of money because we all love to race," said Elie.

Herbert Blake didn't race on Jan. 8, as he wasn't feeling well, but he'll be out with his team at the Muskrat Jamboree.

"My wife, she chuckles and says the dogs eat better than we do at home," he said. "They're athletes and we're passionate about keeping them."

His obsession with sled dogs and his desire to keep the mushing tradition alive goes back 52 years.

Long before he became chief of the Inuvik Native Band, Blake was raised surrounded by dogs in Fort McPherson. For him, dogs are a direct link between traditional aboriginal culture and the modern world we now inhabit.

"Everybody had their role in the raising and care of the dog teams," remembered Blake.

"My mother would take care of the females that were having puppies and once the puppies were weaned it was the children's responsibility to socialize them, put them in harness get them used to working. Once they were a year or so old, our fathers would take them and work them."

Most mushers now buy food from down south for their teams (Blake estimates it costs him $30,000 annually for 25 dogs), but in those days families' lives seemed as much about feeding their dogs as feeding themselves. As the leaves changed from summer into fall and all nature prepared for the long frozen silence, Blake remembers the frenzied netting and drying of fish along the river for winter feed.

The dogs were bigger too - "big furry suckers" that often weighed more than 60 pounds and were built for working in deep snow. Today's dogs, meanwhile, are mixed with greyhound and hunting breeds to make them faster, though less strong.

Then came the snowmobile, growing in popularity until it began to completely replace dog teams in the early 1970s. Transportation now required money instead of knowledge and effort.

"That's when you started to see the demise of our people here," he said. "We were completely independent, but once you took away the need for them to take care of their traps and tools, to be on the land gathering, that was our demise."

Neon-stickered snow-mobiles don't do much for Blake. He's got one, but it's eight years old and has only travelled 3,000 kilometres, versus the 20,000 kilometres he estimates he's put on his dog team.

"I don't trust a snowmobile in the bush," he said.

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