Mushing in Michigan

Dec. 7, 2005

“When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow...” Jack London’s Buck in “Call of the Wild”

Dogsledding is generally thought of in Jack London terms, as Buck, the dog loping through the frozen tundra, or as grand, cold visuals of Greenlanders wearing giant fur hoods and standing tall over a dogsled team. One of North America’s oldest winter sports, dogsledding can be traced back to the Inuit/Eskimos and the northern Indians, who depended on teams of sled dogs for transportation, assistance in hunting and companionship.
Organized dogsled racing began back in 1908 in Nome, Alaska. But, believe it or not, dogsledding is also a growing sport in Northern Michigan, with many of the “Mushers” (as dogsled drivers are called - the word is derived from the French marche, meaning “to march,” and originated among the French fur trappers in Alaska) being part of the Mid Union Sled Haulers Association, appropriately nicknamed “M.U.S.H.”

PLENTY OF ROOM
“There are 20 dogsled races in Michigan every year,” musher Kevin Batchelder of Algonac explains, “and M.U.S.H. hosts nine of them. It’s a great amateur organization that exists purely for love of the sport and love of the dogs.”
Batchelder and his wife, Sandy, have been part of M.U.S.H. for years, and run four dog teams out of their own kennel, training the dogs on a private 200-acre family-owned spread next to the Huron National Forest in Northern Michigan. “Between the dirt roads and the fire lanes, we’ve got plenty of room to run the dogs,” Batchelder continues.
He and his wife became intrigued by dog racing in 1995, when they saw the dogsledding movie “Iron Will” (starring Mackenzie Astin, David Ogden Stiers, and Kevin Spacey.) “That really piqued our interest,” he enthuses, “then we went to Mackinaw City the first week of February and saw the Mackinaw Mush. It was our first time there - and the windchills were 50 below - but we met a lot of dogsledding folks, got the kids a spectator ride on a dogsled, and we’ve been hooked ever since.”
The Batchelders and their kennel of 16 dogs are also getting their kids into the sport. They usually do mid-distance racing as a general rule (30-60 miles), but their son, Joshua, also does “sprint races” - 2.5 miles as fast as you can go, which means the dogs are tearing along at 25-30 miles per hour.
Meanwhile, their daughter, Courtney, is spending the next year preparing for the Junior Iditarod race in Alaska. The Junior Iditarod is quite a financial undertaking, so they’re working to raise funds, and training Courtney for what will be a two-day,160-mile race in
our northernmost state, quite a trip for both
the Batchelder family and for the dogs.
CLASSIC DOG
And, oh, what dogs! Kevin Batchelder mentions that, much like car shows have their classic cars, dogsled racing has its classic dog - namely, the Siberian Husky, originally imported from Russia, with its tough feet, strength, good attitude, and desire to run, not to mention their pretty-dog looks.
“Everybody falls in love with those blue eyes,” Batchelder chuckles. One of the Batchelders’ own dogs is even related to Diesel, one of the dogs that appeared in the 2002 Cuba Gooding Jr. movie “Snow Dogs.”
Racing sleddogs each wear a harness to which individual tuglines are snapped, with the dogs hooked up in pairs and the tuglines attached to a central gangline. The most usual categories of dogsled teams are three-dog, six-dog, and 12 dogs or more. Some races have four, eight, or ten dog classes - but it is rare to see more than 22 dogs hooked at once in a racing team. And these are strong dogs - one dog can pull up to 10 times its own weight.
“The dogs have to want to pull the sleds,” Batchelder explains, “after all, the dogs are connected by a rope, and you can’t force a rope. We don’t ever use whips or anything like that, despite what you might see in the movies - real sled dogs race because they want to, and to please their masters.”
The dogs have their own positions, too - lead dogs, the dogs in front, are usually on a loose leader or may be unhitched in order to find a trail for the rest of the team. Swing or point dogs are directly behind the leader, and “swing” the rest of the team behind them along the turns and curves of the trail. Team dogs are the next section of hard-working dogs - a small team may not have dogs in this position. And, finally, wheel dogs are those closest to the sled itself, and must be of even temperament so as not to be spooked by the fast-moving sled directly behind them.

PELLSTON ICEBOX
Linda Maroun of Petoskey, who has been involved with dogsled racing since 1989, agrees that the dogs are really what dogsled racing is all about.
“If you’re any kind of musher, the bloodlines of the dogs are everything,” she says, “the best dogs are the Siberians, the Siberian mixes - and the three most impressive lines are the Reddingtons, the Wrights, and the Whileys. Those are some dogs.”
Maroun helped get the Pellston Icebox dogsled race going, too (the next Icebox event is tentatively scheduled for the second weekend in February, 2006), and although she’s out of the racing scene herself now, she still mentors other dogsled racers.
“I help them figure out what kind of feed to give the dogs, what kind of harness, what kind of sleds - and we do a lot of mentoring through sleddogcentral.com online, too.”
As for those sleds, there are basically two types of dogsleds - the “basket sled,” on which the bed part is raised up from the snow, and the “toboggan sled,” which is flat to the ground. Both sleds generally see the musher standing on the back with the handlebar, guiding the dogs along.
The sleds also have interchangeable runners made of plastic, which most Northern Michigan dogsledders, according to Batchelder, change about five times in a regular season as they get nicked up by ice and other debris. But in just one of the famed Alaskan Iditarod races (as opposed to the Junior Iditarod) - a sled can go through a whopping 10-15 sets of runners in just under two weeks, likely a result of the brutal conditions of the over 1,000-mile race - which may include blizzards, sub-zero temperatures, and gale-force winds.

LOCAL RACES
They might not quite be Iditarod races, but there are several organized dogsled racing events in Northern Michigan that interested onlookers can check out:

•The trails are already being cut and cleared for the 17th Annual Mackinaw Mush, which will take place in Mackinaw City on February 4th-6th - the National Anthem and traditional “Blessing of the Sleds” takes place at 9 a.m. on Saturday, February 4, and racing begins at 9:30. You can even get more involved by volunteering to help with registrations, trail grooming, or dog handling (just email volunteer@mackinawmush.com).
•Drummond Island’s Race the Rock takes place on February 25-26.
•Kinross hosts not one, not two, but three events - the Kinross Classic Sled Dog Race on January 7-8, the Kinross International on January 28-29, and the Kinross Two Sled Dog Race on February 25-26.
•If you haven’t had enough dogsled racing by March, there are still two more events in the U.P. to catch - the Rainbow Lodge races on March 4-5, and the Two Hearted River Sled Dog Race on March 11-12, both in beautifully rustic Newberry, Michigan.
•The Kalkaska WinterFest and Dogsled Races bring the bark close to home at the county fairgrounds Jan. 21-22.

THE U.P. 200
The longest dogsled race in Northern Michigan, however, is the U.P. 200 that starts on February 17. This is the big one: it’s a 240 mile, 12-dog dogsled race that is also a qualifier for the Iditarod.
The race will start and finish in Marquette, where there will be plenty of info on the mushers and the dogs, plenty of spectators (15,000 turn out to view this race every year) and plenty of hearty flapjack breakfasts.
Those who really want to get the feel of things can even take a trip of their own on a dogsled - companies like Wilderness Trail Outfitters and Triple Creek Kennels (both in the U.P.) can take you on a short or long excursion, or train you on how to drive your “own” sled dog team.

More info about dogsled racing can be found at the following online links:
www.sleddogcentral.com, www.iditarod.com,
www.midunionsledhaulers.com (M.U.S.H.), www.mackinawmush.com, www.up200.org, and www.isdra.org