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Stubborn Gal
The True Story of an Undefeated Sled Dog Racer
By Dan O'Neill, Klara Maisch UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Dan O'Neill
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60223-272-3
CHAPTER 1
Grandpa, tell me a story about when you lived in Alaska.
All right. I'll tell you a story that happens to be true.
Once upon a time there was a young woman whose name was the same as yours: Sarah. This Sarah was tall and strong and pretty just like you. She lived in a cabin in the woods with her husband and their ten sled dogs.
One winter, Sarah's husband took a job for a few weeks in the oil fields way up north on the Arctic coast of Alaska. Sarah stayed home alone and kept the fire burning in the wood stove. Each day she took the dogs out for a run, five dogs at a time. In the evening she made up two buckets of food to feed the dogs.
One day, when she was bored at being home alone, she saw a small notice in the Fairbanks newspaper advertising two dog races, a 60-miler and a 30-miler.
"What the heck," thought Sarah, "I'll enter."
Sarah knew Andy Handwringer, one of the organizers, so she phoned him.
"I was thinking of entering that 60-mile race," Sarah said.
"Oh," said Andy, sounding surprised. "Not the 30-miler?"
"I was thinking the 60," said Sarah.
"Hmm," said Andy. "How many dogs would you run?"
"I guess I'd take all ten," she said.
"Gee, I'm not sure that would be such a good idea, Sarah," said Andy.
"Have you ever run ten dogs before?"
"No," she said.
It took plenty of strength to control even the five dogs she ran every day, each one weighing 50 to 60 pounds. She knew that a ten-dog team would be very powerful, and that it would take all her muscle and skill to control them.
"What if you fell off and the team got away?" asked Andy.
It's true, what Andy was getting at.
If a musher falls off the sled and loses the team, the dogs won't stop. They'll just run all the faster until they get into a big tangle somewhere down the trail. And that could lead to a terrible fight. It's very dangerous, no two ways about it. That's why a dog musher never lets go of the sled, even if it means dragging behind.
"I myself am going to run in the 30-miler," said Andy. "It will be easier and not really a race, but a 'fun run.' I think you should enter the 30-miler, Sarah, and with a smaller team. It really wouldn't be fair to the other mushers or to the dogs if you tried to run ten dogs and couldn't do it."
Did I mention that this Sarah was stubborn?
No.
Well, she was. Oh, boy! Kind of quiet, but stubborn as a stump! Sarah didn't argue with Andy.
But she didn't change her mind either. The next morning she went out to the dog yard. As soon as she moved the sled, and its moosehide lashings started to squeak, every chain of every dog rattled across the threshold of every doghouse.
The yard buzzed with nervous energy. The dogs whizzed around their posts on the ends of their chains, whining and moaning.
They lunged, and the chains snapped taut. They jumped up on their houses. Then they jumped down again.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Stubborn Gal by Dan O'Neill, Klara Maisch. Copyright © 2015 Dan O'Neill. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS.
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