Local teens put together dog team for first race

KYLE VONBOSE

April 11, 2008 at 11:19AM AKST

Dog mushing is a sport that requires hard work, dedication and above all else patience. But for 17-year-old Keenan Hermann of Dillingham and his sister, Libby, 15, raising and training their first dog team was well worth it.

Keenan Hermann competed in the Western Alaska Championship Sled Dog races during Beaver Round-Up in Dillingham on March 14. It was his and the team’s first race. The championship was a three-heat race with a guaranteed purse of at least $20,000.

Hermann ran the race with a team of four dogs and a homemade sled. Three of the four dogs were pups, just shy of a year old, raised and trained with the help of Libby.

He completed all three heats of the 18.5-mile race in an open class of mushers ranging from novice to veteran running teams of eight to 15 dogs. Hermann did not place in the race, but the courage and determination of the first-time dog team represents the true spirit of Bristol Bay.

The Hermanns first dreamed of a dog team after Libby’s passion for skijoring demanded a faster and fitter dog than their family’s Husky mix, Stu. Local resident Harold Andrew gave her a sleek 8-year-old sled dog named Maisy.

Maisy wasn’t too crazy for skiing.

"When I had Maisy skijoring, she acted like she didn’t know what any commands were," Libby said. "Later, when we started putting her with the team, she knew everything. So she obviously didn’t like skijoring at all."

It was then that Keenan and Libby decided Maisy needed a team. A local musher named Andy Ruby gave them four husky pups, and the Hermanns had their first dog team.

Keenan said they learned a lot about training their pups from a book called "Mush! A Beginners Manual of Sled Dog Training" for the Sierra Nevada Dog Drivers Inc.

Keenan also credits much of what they learned from local mushers Kyle Belleque and Andy Ruby, who answered many of their mushing questions over the phone.

Belleque recently ran in the Kusko 300 and has been working to promote mushing as a healthy activity. He was also the host of the 2008 Western Alaska Championship Sled Dog races.

Ruby, an outspoken promoter of mushing for much of his life, died last fall.

The Hermanns trained the pups for an hour a day, four to six days a week. The smartest of the four pups took a little over a month to begin to understand commands.

Of the quartet, Ruger, Savage and Granite were ready to pull a sled in a little over five months. The fourth pup, named Stranger, may not be cut out to be a sled dog.

With the pups growing up fast, Keenan and Libby needed to come up with a sled. They didn’t have the money – upwards of $500 – to buy one, so Keenan decided to build one himself out of local spruce and birch trees.

"It was about my only option," Keenan said. "I used the ‘Alaskans How to Handbook,’ put out by the Alaska Trappers Association. I kind of modified a plan they had in there."

He cut down the trees himself and ran them through his family’s sawmill using skills his father had taught him. He jointed the pieces together and secured them with heavy-duty twine.

The sled has held up. Keenan said he has put about 500 miles on it, and it’s worked pretty well.

The Hermanns only had about two months of training as a full dog team before their first race. During those two months, Keenan was running them for two to three hours a day. He said the daily practice helped him get pretty comfortable with the team and helped him get over his pre-race nervousness.

"A couple of days before the race, I was really scared," Keenan said. "But when it came right down to the race, I was kind of surprised, but I wasn’t that nervous. I knew the drill for running my dogs, and it was just like running them any other time."

All in all, the Hermann’s first contest went pretty well. The dogs pulled through, and Keenan was rewarded with a $900 check for finishing.

The Hermanns are planning to get more dogs, with the help of Belleque.

Belleque said that when he got started mushing, people gave him dogs for free, and he wants to make sure the Hermanns are able do the same.

Keenan and Libby both plan to make mushing a part of their lives for sport and for fun. They hope to have a full team by next winter and are looking forward to more races.

Belleque said the Hermanns have seen such early success because of all the time they have put into training.

"They’ve been raised with a good sound work ethic," Belleque said. "Their parents are supporting them, but this is all up to those kids; whether or not they do this and whether not they succeed. Dog mushing is a lot of hard work, and those kids are not afraid of hard work, that’s for sure."

Kyle von Bose can be reached at (907) 348-2438 or toll free at (800) 770-9830, ext. 438.