Husky News

As she begins her fifth season of competitive sled dog racing, Kathy Lesinski said her family has finally accepted that mushing is her prime pursuit.

Not that she can blame them for not taking her racing of Siberian huskies seriously at first — it’s hardly a burgeoning occupation in Connecticut, where dense development and a dearth of snow pose major training challenges.

Kathy Lesinski and some of her huskies in a 60-mile race last year in New Hampshire. She placed first.Three Pairs Photography/Barry Millman

She and her husband, Bill, have found ways to overcome those challenges — hustling their 15 dogs out for 3 a.m. training sessions when the weather will be too warm for the thick-coated dogs during the day, using an all-terrain vehicle instead of a sled when there is no snow and heading to New Hampshire for long periods during the racing season from November through March to find colder temperatures and more predictable snowfalls for 30-mile training runs.

So when a relatively rare storm in December left Connecticut blanketed with several inches of snow, Ms. Lesinski, 42, said she was especially eager to leave her disbelieving relatives at a holiday gathering to pack up the dogs and head to a tract of state-owned land near their home.

After 40 minutes harnessing and getting protective boots onto the dogs’ paws, the Lesinskis and their team were off on a 10-mile training run.

Bill and Kathy Lesinski unload a Double Driver long-distance competitive dog training sled at their Broadbrook, Conn. Home on January 5, 2008, after returning home from an event in New Hampshire. (George Ruhe for The New York Times)

Many involved with sled dog racing said they knew of no other female long-distance competitive musher from Connecticut besides Ms. Lesinski. There are a few who run in shorter recreational races and one other woman, Becki Tucker of Voluntown, who this season will race in mid-distance competitions of between 30 and 60 miles, but whose plans to begin competing in 100-mile races were delayed when she suffered a head injury.

“It is unusual to have a team from that far south,” said Tenley Bennett, coordinator of the Eagle Lake 100-mile race scheduled in northern Maine for Jan. 24.

The International Sled Dog Racing Association, based in Minnesota, estimates there are 3,000 dog drivers in North America. About 40 percent of mushers in the United States live in Alaska, the association said.

Eagle Lake will be Ms. Lesinski’s first race this season. Hers is the only Connecticut team registered.

In 2008, she finished 11th in a 16-team field in the race, a spot Ms. Bennett called respectable, especially because Ms. Lesinski competed primarily against teams from Canada and northern New England, where racing is more common, the training season longer and most racers have larger packs of dogs and race only their fastest ones.

Ms. Lesinski got involved in the sport after watching a sled dog race while on a ski trip in Vermont. Since then, she and her husband have dedicated their lives to their dogs and the sport, spending about $15,000 a year. Neither she, a substitute physical education teacher when she’s not racing, nor her husband, a retired athletic director, had any history of working with dogs.

In her first four race seasons, she competed in 16 races, gradually building to the competitions of at least 100 miles. This season, she said, she intends to race in two 100-mile races, along with the 60-mile segment of the Can-Am Crown International in Fort Kent, Me., in February.

Competitive mushing is far from a lucrative undertaking. Ms. Bennett in Maine, a former sled dog racer, said she discovered that even if she won every race she entered, the prize money still would pay for only the care of her 20 dogs.

That is one reason Ms. Lesinski is especially excited about the Eagle Lake race — a $10,000 total purse there means every team that finishes will bring home at least some money. That will help defray some of the cost of racing, she said.

Source: The New York Times