Husky News

David Hochman’s trail to becoming one of the world’s top sled dog racers started with his life in turmoil.

He’d just failed Grade 7 and his parents were getting divorced. The 13-year-old boy channelled his strife into love for a Samoyed sled dog he purchased at Festival du Voyageur.

He bought the dog to pull newspapers on his paper route. With money from delivering the Winnipeg Tribune, he purchased another dog. He trained the dogs to pull him on his toboggan. Then he purchased another dog.

Hochman was on his way to becoming a future top-flight musher.

Last week, Hochman beat world-renowned sled dog racer Buddy Streeper on the second day of the two-day race at Grand Rapids, 400 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Streeper is one of the top two racers in the world, along with the man the sled racing fraternity simply calls “the Swede” — Egil Ellis, who now resides in Alaska.

Streeper still won the two-day, 34-mile race with a better overall score, but Hochman captured the racing world’s attention. His phone rang off the hook with congratulatory calls from across Canada.

“Dave is one of the top 10 mushers in the world,” said Robert Peebles, a sled dog racer from near Edmonton, Alta. Not only is he very good, said Peebles, but Hochman makes a living off the sport. “There are only a handful of mushers who make any money on it,” said Peebles.

To which Hochman concedes it’s not the greatest of livings — for all the time he puts into it, it would amount to a meagre hourly wage — but it lets him pursue his passion. He also has commercial sponsors Tuffy’s Pet Food and Prairie Dog Supply Company in East Selkirk. He works summers at St. Malo Provincial Park.

Hochman is an anomaly on the sled dog racing circuit. Most of the big players come from families where fathers and grandfathers raced sled dogs. That holds true for Streeper, and for the Cook family of Saskatchewan — father, Raymond, or son, Kevin, are perennial winners of The Pas Trappers’ Festival world championship. In Cross Lake, the Garrioch family of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO) Grand Chief Sydney Garrioch are one of the dominant sled racing families.

But Hochman’s father couldn’t tell a dog sled from a steam engine. Hochman had to start from scratch.

He’s also an anomaly in that he’s not from the north or from the country. He grew up in St. Boniface. After his parents divorced, Hochman grasped onto the Francophone heritage of his mother, Corinne, a Leblanc, and the Festival du Voyageur sled races. “The Festival du Voyageur is a big part of my heritage,” he said.

Several people mentored him, including Winnipeg musher Larry Tallman, who at the time owned Princess Auto with his brother, Bob. Larry now runs a large animal-feed business in Alaska. “Larry did more than teach me. He was like a brother,” said Hochman. Today, Hochman, 42, tries to mentor youth the same way.

“We’re such an underground sport. We all know who won The Pas championship in 1928 and the Olympic gold medal in 1932 but no one else does,” Hochman said.

The answer to both questions is Manitoba’s legendary Emile St. Godard and his lead dog, Toby. Sled dog racing was a demonstration sport in the 1932 Olympics at Lake Tahoe when St. Godard captured gold. A jealous rival later poisoned his dog.

St. Godard was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame just last year. A stuffed Toby, standing in a proud pose, is in the Sam Waller Museum in The Pas.

Hochman loves being with the dogs, the camaraderie with other mushers and whisking along the frozen open tundra at speeds of “about 20 miles per hour. When you’re standing on the back on two-inch-high runners, it feels more like you’re going 40 miles per hour,” he said. “The dogs don’t make any noise when they run, just the sound of the sled skimming over the snow.”

Near St. Malo, 60 kilometres south of Winnipeg, he trains his dogs on a 23-kilometre trail, thanks to the permission of five landowners. He keeps a kennel of 47 sled dogs. Hochman’s dogs are Alaskan husky crossed with greyhounds and German short-hair pointers.

” ‘Good dog!’ That’s what they live for. Just to hear you say that. They want to please you so much,” he said.

His “thrill of a lifetime” was racing the famous 10-day, 1,000-mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Alaska. That’s more a marathon race and Hochman excels at sprint races.

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press

David Hochman is passionate about his sled dogs and the sport that has won him recognition among his peers.

He placed second at last year’s The Pas Trappers Festival to perennial winner Kevin Cook of Saskatchewan. That was in a three-day, 35-miles-per-day race. But Hochman was the only racer still running his 10 dogs, a testament to the dogs and his handling of them, and won the third day handily. He and wife, Janet, and some friends stayed up the night before rubbing down the dogs.

He has competed many times in northern aboriginal communities, travelling as far as Lac Brochet. To Hochman, aboriginal communities are the mecca of sled dog racing. “I respect native people and I respect their culture,” he said.

Hochman has been Manitoba champion three times. He has seven blue recycling bins full of trophies stored in his garage from races across North America. People interested in dog sledding can contact the Manitoba Dog Sledding Association.

Still, one of Hochman’s greatest moments was winning the Festival du Voyageur sled dog race. It took him 19 years. Accepting the award, he choked up and, speaking in French, thanked his mother and just about everyone else on the planet. “It meant everything to me,” he said.

But the festival has cancelled the sled dog race this year, saying it doesn’t have money. To Hochman, that’s a blow to both the sport and Francophone culture. “I’m really hurt by that,” he said.

There’s another reason he’s hurt by the cancellation. It means for some kid out there the sled dog races can’t be a beacon in a messed up world the way it once was for him.

Source: Winnipeg Free Press