Losing your team is a nerve-wracking, confidence-destroying experience. As I said, it happens to all of us at one time or another. That doesn't make it any the less traumatic. Anything can happen to an unsupervised loose team. A massive dog-fight could conceivably take place (though that's unlikely with Seppalas). Individual dogs can get tangled, dragged, injured, even strangled. A loose team might find its way onto the highway and get hit by an 18-wheeler or a gravel truck. It could end up in a neighbour's yard, causing all sorts of problems with poultry or livestock. Your mind invests endless scenarios of disaster as you trudge along doing the March of Shame.
So when you arrive back at the dogyard, dog-tired from walking for half an hour in heavy snowboots over a piece of trail they can run in 6 minutes, then to discover that they arrived in perfect order 12 or 15 minutes ago, having done just fine without their driver's executive presence, two conflicting feelings well up. The first is enormous relief that they are all in the kennel where they belong, uninjured and none the worse for the mishap. And the second is wild indignation -- that they would just go off and leave you lying in the snow, that they would put you through such excruciating mental agony when they might so easily just stop and wait for you to catch up, that they could manage to complete the difficult course perfectly well entirely without your participation. And both of these feelings, I can assure you (if such an incident has never befallen you) are very strong emotional experiences. (I knew one woman who switched from Siberians to Alaskans immediately after such an incident. Apparently another dog driver convinced her "that would never have happened if she'd been driving Alaskans." (HAR-DE-HAR Har Har! Rolling On The Floor Laughing!)
I've managed to convince myself that these dogs are my friends, even that some of them "worship me" -- co-leader Happy among them. Now Evita may be a recently-acquired yearling nitwit who isn't yet closely bonded, who doesn't really count. But Happy is very close to me, is 5 1/2 years old and has led for me all her life. The other six are from 6 to 9 3/4, all home-bred and trained, having spent their working lives being driven only by me.
What goes through their little doggy minds as they make their way home minus the musher? Do they experience not one shred of remorse or reluctance at leaving me lying prone in the snowbank, injured for all they know, to carry on their carefree little romp without me? This is a question -- and a stark reality of dog driving -- that is a bit difficult to face up to squarely. It's very easy to let your ego run wild with this, conceiving great resentment against your dogs.
I think the key to understanding this must be found in the group psychology of sleddogs. AS INDIVIDUALS, running free, out of harness, any or all of these dogs might show more concern. Any of them might turn back to investigate, might even sit on their haunches waiting for me to pick my battered, shaken self up, dust the snow off, and resume the excursion. But AS A TEAM they are entirely unable to do such a thing. All their experience of running in harness has been to run together, all doing the same thing, going in the same direction at the same speed, and always to keep going except for brief and grudging "rest" stops of five or ten seconds. Therefore, harnessed as part of a working team, any individual dog who thinks, "but what about BOSS, I think maybe we lost him back there," is powerless to do much about it. Sleddog team conformity dictates that he must do what the rest are doing, must move on ahead or risk being tangled or dragged. And even if several of the dogs should have doubts about contiinuing, they could hardly manage to organise a co-ordinated "haw-come" 180-degree turn to go back for the fallen driver. Few dog drivers encourage their teams to learn this manoeuvre, because it's too easily used by the dogs to terminate longer runs prematurely and spontaneously.
So maybe -- just perhaps -- the eight m.p.h. return home may be taken to represent a faithful team trudging along, most of them thinking, "poor Boss -- I hope he's okay -- I wish he was still on the sled behind us," but collectively unable to do anything other than to continue on in an orderly fashion at a sedate pace following the familiar route. In order to maintain my own trust in my dogs this is what I have to believe. At least none of them can tell me otherwise. That's good -- because anything else might be too painful.
Posted by jjeffrey at February 21, 2004 04:57 PM