Husky News

Since the end of September, an eerie silence has settled over the woods in the Old Exit Glacier neighborhood outside Seward .

Gone are the howls, yips and yelps of 75 Seavey Ididaride and Iditarod running sled dogs.

Instead, the canines, along with 20 dogs based in Anchorage, have been moved to the Seaveys’ winter base near Sterling, where preparations for the upcoming race season are kicking into full gear.

After only a few weeks of a lighter workload in early October, the winter racing season looms like a mountain on the horizon.

“It’s just like farming,” Danny Seavey said.

The work is endless. The logistics a professional musher needs to juggle include: food pickups, maintenance and repair jobs, travel plans, racing, dog care, feeding twice a day, training, training, and more training.

Such a full dog yard requires a lot of helping hands.

This year Mitch Seavey plans on running the Iditarod again, while his son, Danny, will run smaller races.

In addition, two returning Belgian men, Dries Jacobs and Sam Deltour, aim to run the Iditarod along with a 17-year-old Fawn Wilson of Indiana, for the Junior Iditarod.

To keep everything organized, the Seaveys hire a full-time kennel manager. Scott Hagen is in charge of all the vaccinations, feeding and maintaining the dogs’ bedding, houses and other needs. Total human to dog ratio: 6:100.

To prepare for the Iditarod, each dog runs about 2,500 miles during training. This means that at the Seaveys’ camp, each musher is in charge of about 20 dogs, running two training trips a day, and logging up to 5,000 pre-race miles.

Don’t forget to add the 1,049 miles from the Iditarod, plus a few late-season races. The Seaveys don’t only focus on the Iditarod, but also shorter races including the Tustumena 200, Kuskokwim 300, Kobuk 440, Copper Basin 300, and for the first time in 25 years, the All Alaska Sweepstakes race.

It is because of this strict training regimen of a race-filled season that the Seaveys relocate their dogs to Sterling in the winter. Out the back yard lies miles of trail along the natural gas pipeline, coupled with the entire Kenai National Wildlife Refuge nearby.

Thus, the Seaveys train on more than 100 miles, straight out of the dog yard. If the snow conditions are not cooperating, the dogs train with ATVs or trucks.

Sometimes, the Seaveys also go in search of snow, their trucks loaded with sleds, gear and dogs, ready to run.

With all of these miles and races to run, the dogs burn immense amounts of calories. Danny explained that each dog burns about 12,000 calories a day and triple that during races.

To fuel such high metabolisms, each day the dogs consume six 40-pound bags of high-quality dog food, 40 pounds of ground beef, 150 pounds of fish a day or 40,000 pounds a year, 25 pounds of fat, and 30 pounds of tripe.

Whew. Was that 40,000 pounds of fish a year? Multiply that by 365 days a year, and triple it for the races, and that’s more than the Seavey’s three walk-in freezers come close to holding.

Without the help of donations from Icicle Seafoods and local meat packers, the Seaveys’ operation would not be possible.

So, have you started preparing the race food yet?

“Well “c9″ Danny laughed. “We should be.”

He didn’t sound too concerned though.

With a strict work ethic and farmer-like attitude, the Seaveys mount the insurmountable mountain of work, like a mountaineer with slow but steady steps.

Source: The Arctic Sounder