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INUVIK
Inuvik's Marie-Anick Elie is showing the mushing world she could be the top dog.

Marie-Anick Elie of Inuvik holds one of her dogs, Violette. The musher placed seventh in an Alaskan dogsled race last month. - photo courtesy of Alicia Simon

Elie, who works at the National Energy Board's Inuvik office, had her second consecutive top-10 finish at the Fur Rendezvous Open World Championship Race held in Anchorage, Alaska, in February. She placed seventh in the 2013 race, up from 10th in 2012.

While she's taking a break from the competitive dog racing for the time being, there should be no doubt she has the chops to dominate what has traditionally been considered a man's sport.

Elie said while there are significant numbers of female mushers, relatively few rise to top-level success in the sport. She's not sure why that is, but it's a trend she's bucked from the start.

"The best mushers in the world come to this race," Elie said. "It's the toughest sprint race in the world, and only pretty special dogs can do it."

Unlike the famous endurance races such as the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod, the "Rondy" is considered a sprint event. That term is debatable, since most sprints don't last three days at 40 kilometres a day, but then, dogsledding is a different kind of sport.

"The crowd was going nuts for me," Elie recalled with a smile. "And the male mushers have really encouraged me to stay in the sport."

She began working with sled dogs around 2000, helping out a friend. Then, of course, the sledding bug bit hard, and she eventually set up her own kennel, called Bite Me.

She has been breeding Alaskan huskies for some time, perfecting her team and its attributes. Alaskan huskies, while a mixed breed, are a recognized breed now, bred for speed and endurance, but not so much for brute pulling power.

"It became a way of life," she said. "I'd get up in the morning thinking about the dogs and go to bed thinking about dogs. I had a passion."

There are very few of the "working dogs" left, local enthusiasts say. Gerry Kisoun remembered the local "Mackenzie Valley" dogs as large and powerful but still speedy. They are much like the better-known Eskimo sled dogs," a recognized breed. It's become nearly extinct in the past 50 years or so, but breeders are now making an attempt to resurrect it. No such work is, as yet, underway in the Mackenzie Delta, where some of the dogs can still be found, mostly in more remote communities.

Elie said she began by racing in the jamborees throughout the region. She thanked those events and elders for giving her the experience and confidence she needed to move on in competitive racing.

"I started racing here in the delta," she said. "But the infrastructure here for racing is limited."

Racing requires standardized trails, she said, and Elie was often going out on a snowmobile to pack a 32-km trail then turning around and taking the dogs out for a training run immediately afterwards. It was a lot of work, and there are relatively few mushers in the area.

Fellow dogsledder Mike Gagne said Elie is almost certainly the best driver in the region. He also explained the difference between a musher, like Elie, and more recreational types like himself. Musher, he said, is the name reserved for racers like Elie, who is one of the best in the world.

Elie is now taking a break from the dogs, due to the constraints of her new position with the National Energy Board. She's travelling more, and doesn't have the time to work with the dogs to the degree necessary to be successful at competitions.

She sold her team at the end of the Rondy, but has held on to two of her dogs. That will give her access to their bloodlines when she returns to the sport, and both of those dogs are due to be bred with a bloodline from another musher.

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