She’d wanted a dog for a long time, for the kids. Not a small dog but something large and friendly they could roughhouse with. She told a friend she really wanted a Siberian husky. But Quincy had come to her door and she took him in and was happy with him—until she found he had an obsession with getting into trash. At the same time, she built a loft in her cabin and found that she didn’t quite have the expertise to lay up a set of steps and instead was using a ladder to go to bed at night.
The Bemidji man who gave me an old truck decided to take some time off and go with me to Alaska to help me keep the truck running and handle the dogs for me while I trained in the mountains there. This man isalso an expert carpenter and believes, always, in helping people.
We drove to Alaska from Minnesota. It was a major undertaking to drag a trailer holding twenty dogs in back of a 1960 half-ton Chevy pickup, in December, through country so daunting that many people hesitate to drive it even in the summer. It took eight days, driving twenty-four hours a day, often in low gear at four miles an hour, just to get to the Alaska line, stopping every four hours to let the dogs out, at temperatures fifty below and colder.
Meanwhile Quincy was snuggling in the warm cabin with the woman and her children, now and then getting into the trash and scattering it about the house.
We arrived in Alaska and set up camp in the bush. Everybody within half a state came to call—mostly to check out our dogs—and often they would stay a day or two to wait out a blizzard.
I soon found the Siberian husky had a serious flaw. She pulled wonderfully well for thirty miles. Not thirty-one, not twenty-nine. Exactly thirty. At that point each day she would stop pulling and simply trot along. Since the race is over a thousand miles and it is necessary to run seventy or eighty miles a day, a thirty-mile-a-day dog wouldn’t make it.
One day a man I consider the most repellent man I have ever met came to call—green snot had frozen in his mustache and he kept licking at it while he talked—and he mentioned that he knew a woman who was living alone with her children in the woods and was so sick of climbing a ladder to her loft that she had promised an Alaskan salmon dinner to anybody who could make a set of stairs. We had been eating nothing but camp food for weeks—boiled potatoes, fried potatoes, stewed potatoes with hamburger, hamburger, and hamburger, in that order.
It sounded like a good offer so I hooked up a sled, my carpenter friend jumped in and off we went. Because it was only thirty miles I thought it a good chance to let the better dogs rest and run the Siberian husky. I had stopped running her altogether because she couldn’t keep up with the rest.
We came on the cabin in the bush in the dark—it was light only an hour and a half each day at that time of the year—and I picketed the dogs to a chain I’d brought for the purpose. By the time I went in, my friend had met everybody and was busy laying out the stairway.
Our hostess was as good as her word, and we had a wonderful salmon dinner. Quincy greeted everybody with wiggles—he was always wonderfully affectionate—and I scooped him into my lap and fed him scraps while I ate and the conversation (as always) turned to dogs.
“He’s a good little guy,” I said.
“He gets in the trash all the time,” she said.
“Still, he’s a great dog.”
“I really wanted a Siberian husky but I can have only one dog…”
“Have I,” I said, holding Quincy closer, “got a deal for you.”
So we left with one less dog in the team and Quincy bundled in a sleeping bag (he had no guard hair and couldn’t take the cold well), riding in the sled, eyes peering out at the dogs pulling, and barking and whining encouragement now and then in the dark. And I had a new dog in my life.
What a dog he was, what an incredible dog! Many animals, even dogs, are predictable. Say a certain thing, do a
The Bemidji man who gave me an old truck decided to take some time off and go with me to Alaska to help me keep the truck running and handle the dogs for me while I trained in the mountains there. This man isalso an expert carpenter and believes, always, in helping people.
We drove to Alaska from Minnesota. It was a major undertaking to drag a trailer holding twenty dogs in back of a 1960 half-ton Chevy pickup, in December, through country so daunting that many people hesitate to drive it even in the summer. It took eight days, driving twenty-four hours a day, often in low gear at four miles an hour, just to get to the Alaska line, stopping every four hours to let the dogs out, at temperatures fifty below and colder.
Meanwhile Quincy was snuggling in the warm cabin with the woman and her children, now and then getting into the trash and scattering it about the house.
We arrived in Alaska and set up camp in the bush. Everybody within half a state came to call—mostly to check out our dogs—and often they would stay a day or two to wait out a blizzard.
I soon found the Siberian husky had a serious flaw. She pulled wonderfully well for thirty miles. Not thirty-one, not twenty-nine. Exactly thirty. At that point each day she would stop pulling and simply trot along. Since the race is over a thousand miles and it is necessary to run seventy or eighty miles a day, a thirty-mile-a-day dog wouldn’t make it.
One day a man I consider the most repellent man I have ever met came to call—green snot had frozen in his mustache and he kept licking at it while he talked—and he mentioned that he knew a woman who was living alone with her children in the woods and was so sick of climbing a ladder to her loft that she had promised an Alaskan salmon dinner to anybody who could make a set of stairs. We had been eating nothing but camp food for weeks—boiled potatoes, fried potatoes, stewed potatoes with hamburger, hamburger, and hamburger, in that order.
It sounded like a good offer so I hooked up a sled, my carpenter friend jumped in and off we went. Because it was only thirty miles I thought it a good chance to let the better dogs rest and run the Siberian husky. I had stopped running her altogether because she couldn’t keep up with the rest.
We came on the cabin in the bush in the dark—it was light only an hour and a half each day at that time of the year—and I picketed the dogs to a chain I’d brought for the purpose. By the time I went in, my friend had met everybody and was busy laying out the stairway.
Our hostess was as good as her word, and we had a wonderful salmon dinner. Quincy greeted everybody with wiggles—he was always wonderfully affectionate—and I scooped him into my lap and fed him scraps while I ate and the conversation (as always) turned to dogs.
“He’s a good little guy,” I said.
“He gets in the trash all the time,” she said.
“Still, he’s a great dog.”
“I really wanted a Siberian husky but I can have only one dog…”
“Have I,” I said, holding Quincy closer, “got a deal for you.”
So we left with one less dog in the team and Quincy bundled in a sleeping bag (he had no guard hair and couldn’t take the cold well), riding in the sled, eyes peering out at the dogs pulling, and barking and whining encouragement now and then in the dark. And I had a new dog in my life.
What a dog he was, what an incredible dog! Many animals, even dogs, are predictable. Say a certain thing, do a
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