North American Championship Sled Dog Sprints

Though I spent most of the afternoon jamming with Bill Stevens, I did catch a bit of the dog races and even the dog weight pull, a new event for this year.

I believe the dogs I photographed were Buddy Streeper's, though I'm not sure.

The race finishes in Downtown Fairbanks. The temperature was at least 30° above zero. Warm. These dogs were just trotting along for the most part, already past the finish line and all worn out after their sprint. These are sprint dogs, not long distance dogs. You can see that they look completly different from Iditarod dogs or Yukon Quest dogs. Many of them have pointer in them, and other mixes. The are small, wirey, and fast.

Once they get done, they are way hot and thirsty and roll in the snow and eat as much snow as they can.

One of the lead dogs from the team I photographed coming in. He has a small piece of blue masking tape on his flank, I have no idea why! :oD (That's not a cut, it's the masking tape.)

When I first arrived I saw a couple dogs do the weight pull. I was surprised to see that nearly all the dogs were St. Bernards. The first dog was still very puppyish, and in fact kept goofing off in ways that cracked us all up.

No one took this event very seriously, it was all just for fun. You can see the concrete weights, there weren't very many of them. I hope the lighthearted attitude stays with this event.

He did get this big guy to pull the sledge about six feet. Then he got a cookie.

This guy only pulled a few feet. All the dogs were major goofballs!

Waiting for their turn.