Then and Now

My team. Spring 2007.

Roger Skogen's team (my father-in-law). Koliganek, Alaska Fall 1992.

Keeping in mind the picture of Roger's team is before they are muscled up from hard work and their coats have been shedding all summer, the two teams don't look too different.

Roger's was one of the last teams of working sled dogs on the Nushagak River. They are all gone now. Friendly, the lead dog, was an old dog when Johanna and I married. I tried breeding him to Lucky, but it didn't take. That entire line of working dogs is gone.

These last 6 years I've been trying to import dogs and breed litters that are representative of a team like Roger's. His were not the biggest dogs he had seen, but they hauled wood, went ice fishing and hunting, and generally took him where he wanted to go to do what he wanted to do. I know I've come close because as they say, "The proof is in the pudding." My dogs haul wood and do all the things Roger did with his dogs.

He didn't race them, but enjoyed them every weekend and evening he could spend with them. Roger learned about sled dogs from the old mushers on the Nushagak River. He helped me get started with dogs. I still contact him often for advice. His advice is often different, and more correct, then I get from racers when it comes to working with sled dogs. What racer has taken his team to the woods and truly put them to work? The knowledge of what working dogs are capable of, and how to use them to survive in our corner of the earth, is held in the minds of our old mushers. From the start my goal has been to discover that knowledge and put it to practice with my team of working sled dogs.