There’s something like 312 dogs in the various divisions of the Yukon Quest sled dog race this year. Teams have between eight and 14 dogs for every musher. And you might be at a dog yard where a musher is bustling around preparing for the next run and think that that human is in charge. But seemingly, there’s at least one dog on every team who doesn’t see it that way.
“Monster. He's the one in the middle looking at us with his ears up. He's the most cocky dog I've ever met and he knows where we're going before we do,” Willow Maynard said.
Maynard shares dogs and mushing with her partner, Joey Sabin, who is running the Yukon Quest 550 this year.
“Monster is the brains of the operation. If he’s not in lead, he throws a fit,” Sabin said.
He's the smartest dog ever. He'll take you through open water, glare ice, a trail that's not even there in a blizzard, he'll do anything. Yeah, great connection to have with him,” Maynard said.
“Cokie. I watch her, you know,” said Jody Potts-Joseph, who ran the 200-mile race. She says her dogs tell her when things are wrong or right.
“I have a tight bond with all my dogs, so I mean, you really do read your dogs the whole way,” she said.
200 miler Ashley Franklin says there’s a dog on her team who is the boss.
“Temp literally tells me how to run the race. She is so vocal. She will bark the whole way.” Franklin says Temp’s full name is Tempest, and the name fits.
"She is eight. She's won the Kusko (300). Won the Copper. (Copper Basin 300.) She's gotten like multiple top ten finishes in the Iditarod. And I'm lucky enough to now have her. And she yells at the team and encourages them. Oh man. Tells us when we see markers. I've been in whiteout and she's told me where the marker is," Franklin said. "She also has an announcement for when we're almost home.
Jonah Bacon, loading his sled for the 550-mile race, says he’s learned to stay in tune with his leader.
“Peso, is probably the dog I have the best relationship with. How he's going is how we're all kind of going.”
But there’s another dog on Bacon’s that team that gives orders.
“Yeah, Husker in the back is the motivator. He's always, he's always barking at everybody from the back, yelling at them to get going.”
200-miler JJ Levy says all her dogs tell her how to race in one way or another.
“You know you watch your wheel dogs because they're going to be the ones that's doing a lot of the heavy lifting. And I switch them out every checkpoint so everybody gets a turn in a wheel. My lead dogs, Rick who's at the very end. He's my oldest. He's, he raced back in 2019 when I last raced. And then Bubbles is over here. She's my smallest dog but she's a trooper so she's going to go out.”
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As race officials in Eagle wait for mushers to check in, townspeople are remembering the importance of hosting a checkpoint. It was the last one on the Alaska side of the border on the international, 1000-mile Yukon Quest trail for decades. But in the administrative chaos from the pandemic, the race was shortened and rerouted.
But this year, Eagle will be a checkpoint on the trail again. Mushers will rest at the town’s old schoolhouse after completing one of the most grueling sections of the trail, before continuing on to the finish line in Tok.
Shelby Herbert tells us that townsfolk of all ages are working to give mushers the warmest welcome they can muster.
“Okay, gather round, gather round…”
Christy Robbins is the Yukon Quest checkpoint coordinator for Eagle. She’s also the principal at the local school. Just outside the empty checkpoint shelter, Robbins is teaching high school P.E. A handful of teenagers gather around while she walks them through how to greet mushers as they arrive. They listen attentively, as she gives instructions, pink clipboards clutched in their gloved hands.
When the musher goes in, you should already have called in their time to the race headquarters. All the race information is
hanging on the wall. You should’ve already done that. And when the musher comes in, point to the menu and say, “This is what we have to eat, what would you like?”
Then Eagle Community School teacher Meg Helmer comes tearing down the snowy lane in a sled pulled by her three dogs: Tetlin, Selene and Esther.
They’re not as disciplined as real sled dogs! she said.
The students leash the dogs and ask Helmer a series of questions, documenting her answers on their clipboards. It’s practice for the real thing.
The teens will be some of the first people to receive the Yukon Quest’s remaining competitors. Freshman Flora McDougall can barely contain her excitement.
"It's gonna be fun, but they're gonna be in and out. Like, come up the river, stop, eight hours, out again — you know? But it's gonna be fun watching the mushers come in. I'm gonna try to just do my best to make sure they have everything they need and stuff," she said.
When competitors in the 550-mile race reach Eagle, students will make sure they have all their appropriate gear, show them where to take their mandatory eight-hour break, and wake them up when it’s time to hit the trail again. They’ll also cook for them, as well as all the other people following the Quest — veterinarians, race officials and press, like me.
Later, in the school kitchen, spaghetti noodles foam in big pots. Ground beef simmers in marinara sauce. Students and faculty scurry around, cooking heaps of food for a big community dinner. Sophomore Vivi Muldoon is in the middle of the fray, slathering bread rolls with butter. She says this isn’t her first time working on the Yukon Quest chow line.
"So, Mama would always make brownies for the Quest, and we would have set out signs. It would say, like: “Brownies one mile!” Or: “Did someone say ‘brownies’?!” So that was what we would do, traditionally, every year. And we would set them on this tote on the river, and in the tote there would be these bags with all of the mushers' names on them. And they started talking about it, and they would all get excited every year for their brownies," she said.
But all that food has to get washed down with something. Eagle resident Lance Kozma is doing his part to welcome the Yukon Quest. He’s filtering the checkpoint’s source of potable water to make it taste better.
"It's weird. It tastes like a flat LaCroix. Yeah, sometimes I'll brush my teeth with that water, but I don't drink it straight. It never made me sick, and they've tested it. But it tastes a little funny," he said.
Later that evening, dinner is served in the school cafeteria. Locals and strangers sit side-by-side, loading up on carbs — and lots and lots of cheese. Then a few people break out a guitar, a fiddle, a ukulele.
Jeff Deeter arrived in Eagle on February 4 at 6:55 p.m., a time that was called into Yukon Quest headquarters by youth checkpoint volunteer Flora McDougall. He was the first Quest musher to stop in Eagle in four years.
