Husky News

It’s a rare year Michigan isn’t represented in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

But it’s best to keep checking the Iditarod Web site (www.iditarod.com) for daily updates. Just because a musher signs up doesn’t mean he or she will be at the starting line.

Ed Stielstra with Lady Bird, one of his many sled dogs. (Photo from TASHA STIELSTRA)

When the Yak first checked the site’s 2008 musher list, there were 111 entrants in this year’s race, which starts March 1 in Anchorage.

Four were from Michigan! A few days later, the Yak checked the list again, and one, rookie Richard MacAuley, 61, of West Branch, had dropped out.

(The Yak tried to reach Richard to ask why, but couldn’t track him down. Even the Iditarod folks didn’t have a phone number.)

Then the Yak called Al Hardman, 65, of Ludington, who was also signed up. The three-time Iditarod veteran said he had leased a dog team to another musher and realized too late that he didn’t have enough dogs for two teams. So Al dropped out, too!

But two mushers from the Upper Peninsula, one a veteran and the other a rookie, looked like sure bets: Ed Stielstra, 38, and Jake Berkowitz, 21.

This year’s Iditarod will be Ed’s fourth.

“We’re just about to head out and run 45 to 50 miles,” Ed said from his kennel in McMillan, near Newberry.

“Then we’ll stop for four hours. Then we’ll run another 50 miles. Then we’ll stop again and then we’ll run another 50 miles.”

Whew! The Yak asked him how long the 150-mile training run would take.

“The dogs should be able to average about 10 miles an hour, so it should take about five hours to do 50 miles,” he said, adding:

“It’s amazing what they can do.”

He ran his best Iditarod in just under 12 days. “I’m shooting for about 10 days this year, so I’m hoping to really improve,” he said.

“It’s a good team of dogs and I know a little more what I’m doing. Ten days is a lot to hope for, but it would put me in the top 20, probably.”

He’s already set his sights on winning the race someday, but expects it to take “a few more years.”

“Most of the guys in the top 10 have been running this for 15 to 20 years,” he said.

Jake works for Ed and his wife, Tasha, 33, who own Nature’s Kennel Sled Dog Racing and Adventures, and he will race the kennel’s B team. He said he was “pretty excited” and had just gotten back from a 300-mile training run!

“It was really, really good,” he said of the run. “The dogs did incredible. It seems like the more miles they run the happier and more energetic they get.”

He and his team were set to go out for a 65-mile run the very next day!

Then the Yak talked to Tasha, who won the prestigious U.P 200 Sled Dog Championship two years ago and has raced in France and Switzerland.

Why don’t you run the Iditarod, too? the Yak asked.

She just laughed.

“I’m too smart for that race,” said Tasha. “I know too much about what’s involved. Those pictures of storms coming in and you can’t see the trail, of temperatures 50 degrees below zero, of dogs crossing through ice and slush. People forget it’s real. I’d probably get out there and think, ‘I’m hungry.’

“I don’t need to prove anything to anybody,” she said, still laughing. “And Ed gets older every year and needs a better secretary.”

Go, Ed! Go, Jake!.

Visit Ed and Tasha’s Web site at www.natureskennel.com.

Source: Detroit Free Press