WHAT A RIDE!

 What A Ride!
Reprint from THE RAVEN: Volume 2 Issue 1
February 1995

    In December of 1994, at the Warroad Park, the people of Warroad were introduced to the sport of dogsledding by Millie Kuryliw and Brent Hakala, owners of Anarok Kennels of Middlebro, Manitoba. With their two teams of Alaskan and Siberian huskies, the Canadian mushers treated many people to their first experience on sleds pulled by dogs bred to do the work.

    Many of the dogs had been owned by Pete Fugleberg, a Roseau County musher from the Pine Creek area below Minnesota Hill. Pete had sold Millie and Brent a couple of his sleds too, and helped them with their decisions about harnesses, tugs and tow lines -- and the best dog food to buy.

    Pete and I have known each other for 12 years. He lead me into the activity by giving a dogsled ride, as a favor to me, to a relative of mine who was visiting from Mordiallac, Australia. Because Pete raises over thirty mixed-breed sled dogs, and there is considerable time and effort required to exercise all of them in harness, I volunteered one day to help him run them, so to repay his kindness.

    The only mushing experience I could claim to that point, had been by the seat of my wool pants on a sled cushion. On that trip the steady cadence of trotting dogs and the squeak of Hyfax runners against the snow had lulled me almost to sleep. Learning to drive a team of spirited, long-legged huskies down a narrow, winding wooded trail between towering pines, around blowdowns of swamp spruce, and fire-killed tamarack would prove to be an entirely different story ... 

    At Pete's dog yard, Pete’s dogs were howling and barking continuously as he chose one after another for harness. Some lunged against their length of heavy chain and stood braced upon their back legs straining for his attention. Others paced in wide circles around their swivel tie-out stake, their chains tight with tension.

    Pete unhooked each chain, one at a time, and muscled a wild-eyed plume tailed white fanged hyena to a neckline alongside his pickup truck. After he had picked four small-sized wolf-like animals, he opened a box and chose four red harnesses, each size designated by a special colored cord. The huskies cooperated thoroughly. The dogs seemed temporarily quieted by his looming presence and methodical demeanor as Pete put the harness over the head of each one and pulled their hard muscled front legs through each side. Once left alone; the pandemonium resumed.

The dogs seemed temporarily quieted by his looming presence.

    Pete dragged out two eight-foot wooden sleds to the tie-out posts in the middle of the dog yard and tied a quick-release snap to each. Then he laid out the black and blue braided polyethylene tow lines and untangled the four tug lines and necklines that designated each dog’s place at the sled. Pete worked silently; he pointed out which dog went where and I unhooked them one at a time from the rocking truck as the other six of Pete’s team strained wildly at their necklines.

    I snapped each tug line and neckline and went back for another dog, surprised at their instant cooperation once handled. This sudden timidness made me suspect that Pete had assembled these particularly small dogs because I was inexperienced and they wouldn’t be so hard to handle. My suspicions grew firm as he manhandled each of his six matched big-boned Alaskan and Siberian sled dogs and snapped them into their places on the tow line of his sled a few feet from mine.

    Both teams stayed parallel to each other straining and lunging ahead at the bungee strap shock cords between them and the sleds. The loud frenzied barking and yowling was unnerving as all around me as the unchosen dogs wailed their disappointment. Their chains slapped the ground as they leaped against its length.

    Pete emerged from his pickup wearing a large coyote-fur hat and fur choppers, looking for all the world a mountain man or turn-of-the 20th Century explorer. He walked to his sled, expressionless behind his full red-grey beard. Only then did I think to ask, “How do you steer these things?”

   Pete simply shrugged, pulled his quick-release with a jerk, shouted “OK!” and shot out of the dog yard like a mini-ball from a Hawken rifle, as his dogs clawed for traction, their heads low to the ground.

    My shy dogs turned to demons as the sled began to jerk and shake as though demonically possessed. I pulled the quick-release but nothing happened; I struggled with it as the dogs leaped and cried, eager to reach the other team. I pulled against the straining dogs, afraid to let go of the sled to work on the quick-release with both hands. I stood on the sled brake, an eighteen inch of studded snowmobile track bolted between the tail of the sled runners. Seconds seemed like hours as I fought that damn release.

    Suddenly it fell apart, and we rocketed out of the yard my right arm jerked to its full elastic length of six feet. I tried to hold onto the handle bow and leaped in flying giant strides to maintain my footing. I was ripped from stationary and vertical to mobile and horizontal.

    I yelled, “WHOA!” to stop and jumped on the brake with both feet as we collided with Pete’s entangled team, a virtual husky hell of howling hounds that were just out of sight of the dog yard.

    I jumped off the sled and pulled my lead dogs away from Pete’s team as he worked furiously to untangle his embroiled pile. I worked my way back to the sled as the dogs began to drag me and the sled down the trail past Pete’s pets. I stood on the brake and lifted the sled for more leverage, but it was futile. I yelled at Pete over the din of the barking dogs, “CAN’T HOLD ‘EM!” and hurtled from the scene with a death grip on the handle bow.

    The dogs knew where they were going and I had some idea too; all I had to do was hang on. In a few seconds we were at the east-west county road heading in a northerly direction when the dogs suddenly swung east. The lines slackened, and then snapped tight as a gnat’s ass over a rain barrel. The front end of the sled was jerked out from under me as the sled was thrown onto its side and cracked hard against the ice-packed roadbed.

    I croaked out a feeble, "Whoa," but didn’t let go. I struggled to right the sled as the dogs in all their zealousness, dragged the sled a hundred or more yards down the sandpaper surface of the gravel county road as I yelled “WH-H-OA!!” at the top of my lungs. I could see the lead dog look back over her shoulder as if to say to her teammates, 

“Looks like we’ve got a real winner here, better stop and let him stand up.” 

     They stopped just long enough for me to get the sled back up and get one foot on the runners. I felt like a bug smashed against the windshield who had rolled off the hood and been run-over by an oncoming car. 

“Will I live through this?” I started to wonder.

    Up ahead we had to turn again I knew. This time, left, and into the swamp below Minnesota Hill. I gripped the sled, crouched 'way down low, and leaned into the turn, all one hundred and sixty five pounds of me. The sled skidded sideways as the dogs made an abrupt change of direction and the lines snapped taut again. Down the narrow snowmobile trail we went as I ducked and weaved under low branches becoming accustomed to the ride; my bruised body slowly returning to usefulness.

    The dogs set a steady pace. They were quiet now; the only noises were their energetic panting, the sound of the sled runners against the hardpack snow of the trail and the occasional creak of the sled as it twisted through the turns beneath the low stark branches of black swamp spruce.

"The dogs set a steady pace. They were quiet now..."

    I was taken with this sport despite the life-threatening blast off from the dog yard. This area was quiet and unspoiled; much like cross-country skiing without the effort. A person can see the country in its winter beauty, smell its fragrance, and witness its tranquility from the runners of a dogsled.

    The lead dog’s ears cocked back a bit. I noticed their pace picked up as we swung onto the top of The Hill. A wheel dog (one of the two nearest the sled) demonstrated an-on-the-trail fecal discharge maneuver sled dogs must learn to do, as Pete’s team appeared on the trail behind us, closing fast. Never looking back, my four dog team poured on the coals and tried to outdistance the six dark-bodied and white masked mammoths that approached us steadily from the west. With his wolf fur cap, Pete looked like the hellbent John Brown on his ride to Harper’s Ferry.

    There was something scary about all that. I began to feel like an escaped convict on the trail with Sargent Preston of the Yukon in close pursuit. I almost expected to see blue smoke erupt from his rifle and hear the thwock of a lead ball splinter a tree close to the trail. I began to wish I had twenty dogs to leave this tormentor behind to dodge our road apples, but alas, too soon, I heard Pete’s dogs panting at my heels..

    Pete’s team had caught us and wanted the trail. The trail widened ahead and they began to pull alongside. My team never slowed. If they were going to overtake us, they were going to have to work for it. We ran neck-to-neck for several hundred yards before the trail began to narrow again. I applied the brake a little, and let Pete’s team pass. I was sold on dogsledding then and there. What a ride! What a ride!

 Thanks Pete.

Peter. G. Fugleberg
Dec 18, 1949-July 25, 2012