This year was a little different for me. I had to give up my usual self-serving pleasure from racing my own dogs. Instead, I leased out the bulk of my team waaay back in July, then leased virtually the rest of them after completing the Tustumena 200 at the end of January. The reason was simple, small and wound up weighing six pounds and 10 ounces.

Bree and I were expecting our second baby on Nov. 4, so I knew there was no way to train and condition the dogs the way I should, let alone race them. November and December are critical training months, for me anyway. As it turned out, Jeff King was looking for a few good dogs to fill out his roster so he could compete in the Iditarod and All-Alaska Sweepstakes. We drove nine dogs up to Denali Park from our home here in Kasilof (about nine hours at highway speed) back in July.

I spent the fall working with one team of 14 dogs, a mixed bag of two-year-olds, a yearling and some older dogs that I felt wouldn’t benefit Jeff, including my 10-year-old buddy, Sunbear. With the arrival into the world, right on her due date, of Sylvie Rose Little, my dogs got an instant two weeks off from any activity. I got them barely ready to run the Knik 200 in early January, which I did with an extra two-hour break on the first leg. That rest saved them: All 12 came loping into the finish line, well off Ryan Redington’s winning pace. But it was mission accomplished. They were gaining stamina.

I raced those 14 in the Tustumena 200, actually trying to do well this time, and had a pretty good race. (Thanks in part to three veteran dogs loaned to me by Zack Steer.) We were tentative on the first non-stop 100 miles and lost time on the race leaders, but managed to pass three teams on the second 100 miler. I had a two year old named Panther (out of Mitch Seavey’s dog Petey and my old leader Kazan) in lead the whole way. We wound up fifth.

At the end of the race, Steer loaded up eight of my dogs, who tried out for his Iditarod team, which is a joint venture with Robert Bundtzen.

Then Joe Runyan showed up, taking over for injured Tim Osmar as Rachael Scdoris’ visual interpreter. I usually send a leader or two Tim’s way, and I did again this year. Joe, running Tim’s team, got three of my tried-and-true leaders.

The end result of all this was 15 dogs running on four different Iditarod teams. Jeff had five in his Iditarod team; Zack had four; Bundtzen had three, and Runyan had three. My main concern is that none of my dogs blow the race for anyone, and they didn’t. Most finished under the burled arch. None were at all critical to these teams. Jeff ran one of my dogs, Solomon, in swing for a while, but most of them were in the middle or back of the team. Zack wound up dropping three two-year-olds who just didn’t pace themselves well. Otherwise, King left one behind at White Mountain in his amazing run with a full string of 16 dogs up till that point. (Three of those five also ran the All-Alaska Sweepstakes with King.)

All but two are back home, sitting around as the snow melts in April. Two are still with Jeff in Denali Park, taking part in an annual rite of spring that will produce puppies for the summer visitors to his kennel tour at Husky Homestead.