Balto with Blair Braverman

Blair Braverman tells us how the legendary story of one good dog is actually a story of two good dogs. 

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Transcript

YWA - Balto

Sarah: Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we debunk your favorite Phil Collins movie. And with me today is Blair Braverman. Hello, Blair.

Blair: Hello. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hello, our survival correspondent. 

Blair: I’m here to talk about dogs. 

Sarah: Ah. You've talked a lot about humans and you're so great at the human beat. But like, this is really what you were made for. 

Blair: Tell me what you think of when you hear Balto?

Sarah: Okay, when I think of Balto, I think of an animated movie that I watched as a little kid. I think it came out when I was like eight. I think Kevin Bacon was in it. And it's got a lady looking at the statue of Balto in Central Park, and I think telling her granddaughter the story of Balto. And it's about when she was growing up and she was a toon. She's a human now in the 90s, but she was a toon when she was a little kid. 

Blair: It's the puberty no one talks about. 

Sarah: Yeah, it's kind of a tragedy. And growing up in Nome, there was an epidemic. I don't even know if the movie itself bothers to say that it's set in Nome, but as a kid I was like, there are kids in Alaska, there's an epidemic. And Balto, who's in the way of many cartoon protagonists, always felt a little different than the other sled dogs.

Blair: Just like all of us. 

Sarah: All of us are a little different than the other sled dogs, and that's what makes us so great. But Balto has to demonstrate that by becoming the hero of the day and bringing - what as a kid I understood to be just medicine, because that's the understanding of stuff you have as a child, or I did - to the sick kids and saving the children. And I know from having looked up this movie later on in life, although I haven't watched it since childhood, that he has a love interest named Jenna. And there's something really funny to me about a 1920s prospector naming a dog Jenna.

Blair: Yeah. 

Sarah: And that's the story of Balto. And, you know, my understanding of it is that he's this heroic dog and that the Iditarod commemorates Balto. I feel like that's what I learned in elementary school. And it all comes back to this one spectacular dog who kind of did it all on his own. 

And I also want to foreground what I suspect is the case, which is that all of the dogs in this episode are going to be good dogs. We're not trying to debate that. 

Blair: Yes. Yeah, very, very important to clarify. Yeah. 

Sarah: However, there's more to the story.

Blair: You know, that sounds like what I grew up with too. And I had a book when I was little and it was called like, Learn to Read: Level 2, or something. It was one of those books. And I think it's still around. It was called, Balto, The Bravest Dog Ever, and told basically that story. And I was obsessed with it as a kid. So obsessed, for years. 

Like, I started babysitting so I could read this book to other children., I brought it every time I saw other children, and I babysat a lot. And I kind of credit this book for me becoming a long-distance dog sledder today. But I don't know if I've admitted that publicly before. You know, Balto is the mushing story we hear. But it's more complicated than that. 

Sarah: Yeah, and I feel like mushing is a sport that many Americans would not guess still goes on today. At least outside of the Iditarod, let alone like a way of life. And I certainly didn't know before I met you that it was a way of life. And it's so interesting that kind of, it's as if Americans forgot figure skating existed except for Sonja Henie. 

Blair: You know, people tend to put mushing in the same category as Santa and Santa's reindeer. Like that's an association I hear a lot, but it makes sense because it happens in really remote areas. Like, when would you get to see sled dogs if you live in 99% of the U.S., or the rest of the world, for that matter. 

Sarah: Right. And I mean, I wonder where we should start. Because I feel like one of the questions here is, what is a sled dog? Which again, this is why you were made for this show. 

Blair: Well, I'm going to get to that, but I'm going to tell you where the story starts. All right. So Sarah, our story begins in 1924 in Nome, Alaska. 

Sarah: Ninety-nine years ago. 

Blair: Ninety-nine, you're right. It's a village on the coast of the Bering Sea. It's very isolated. It's very remote. It's the northwesternmost town in North America, or it was at the time. And it's like the hub for the surrounding villages.

So at the time, it had about 1,400 residents and 10,000 more living nearby. And Sarah, you and I have been to Nome together. 

Sarah: Mm hmm. A couple times. Yeah.

Blair: Because we were there for the end of the Iditarod, a couple years, I think. And I just can't resist sharing my favorite Nome story. 

Sarah: Oh, please do.

Blair: Which is, you had flown up there. And my husband, Quince, and I had taken a snowmobile that was much too small, it was literally a child's snowmobile, the last 300 miles. It was very comical. People came out of villages and took pictures of us laughing. 

Sarah: So it's the smallest parade ever. 

Blair: It really was. And your job, you got there on a plane, and you were going to find us a place to sleep. And you found, I don't know how you found some lady where for like $100 each we could sleep on her floor in her living room. And so that was great. We arrived, we had a place to sleep. And then every night we were there she kept adding more people to her living room floor for $100 each until there were just like, in my mind, there were like 20 of us.

Sarah: It was solid tourists. Instead of the floor, there was just tourists. 

Blair: Nome does not have the infrastructure for the influx of people who come for the end of the Iditarod, who come when there's like a big event. And then you and I - this is my favorite thing about you - and I were putt putting down through town on that tiny snowmobile, and you're very tall and I'm quite tall. So this is a comically small snowmobile for anyone, but you and I just have our knees sticking out. And we look like we're on one of those like tiny kid’s toy cars and we're put putting down Main Street. And we get pulled over by the sheriff in slow motion. We were approaching speeds of 12mph.

Blair: And we pull over to the side of the road in our little toy snowmobile, and the sheriff steps out of the car and is like the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Like, she looks like a movie star, she shakes out her hair in slow motion. 

Sarah: Sheriff Maggie. 

Blair: Sheriff Maggie, I forgot her name. And she just told us we weren't allowed to drive the snowmobile on that road, so we putt putted away and never came back.

Sarah: What she said specifically, in my memory, began with the phrase, “Okay girls.” 

Blair: Yeah, I remember that, “okay girls”. I mean, it was just the most comical scene. And then that night there was a bikini contest at a bar downtown, where everyone made bikinis out of weird things. I tried to enter with a bikini made of dog booties and I was disqualified because they were too much like fabric.

Sarah: Which is really a margin call, but go on.

Blair: But you know what? I think the prizes were meant to go to locals. I think that was the spirit of the thing and that was why.

Sarah: And that's a great spirit. 

Blair: But, you were selected to be a judge in this bikini contest. Which by the way was amazing. It was so good. It was like men and women every age, every body type, just like dancing in these amazing outfits. 

Sarah: I think the winning entry was called, ‘Fish and Game’, and it involved crab shells. It was really good.

Blair: So you were on the judging panel, and then your co judge was Sheriff Maggie. 

Sarah: Yes! We realized that because you came over to talk to me and she looked at us, and she said, “Didn't I scold you girls on a snowmobile earlier?” 

Blair: So that's my gnome story. It's a very small town. It's got a great vibe, incredible history. It's a sort of post gold rush town so it has this like lingering glamour. And also a very beautiful sheriff who judges bikini contests.

Sarah: It's a really special, amazing place. I mean, I love that. I'm so happy you told that story, because that's my favorite Nome story as well. And it feels something like maybe if San Francisco got frozen in amber in 1880 or something. 

Blair: Yeah, for sure.

Sarah: Because it feels like just a frontier town that didn't get built out.

Blair: But tiny, like one block of San Francisco. So that's Nome now. That's our limited experience as tourists of Nome now. And we're going to go back 99 years to Nome then. And it was much more isolated. You couldn't fly in. You couldn't take a tiny snowmobile.

Sarah: What mode of transportation was even available, Blair? 

Blair: What do you think they used? Well, half the population left every winter because it was so remote. There's no roads, there's no planes, there's no boats. When the last boat leaves, the sea ice freezes. How do they get in and out? How do they carry the mail? 

Sarah: I mean, if only you could have some kind of a sled conveyed by dogs, acclimatized to live in such harsh conditions, and gifted with a heart longing to pull heavy objects. 

Blair: Well, that is what Nome did. In the way that like, our cities today are built around cars, Nome was built around dogs.

Like, it was known as the center of the sled dog world. Mushers were famous, dogs were famous. The mail coming in was a huge deal. There'd be this enormous 25 dog team would come in, pulling massive sacks of mail, and the whole town would come. Most people in Nome had their own dog team and the dogs would roam loose on the streets and come in the saloons and hang out. And then every night they would all howl together. Just, I mean, all these dogs, just imagine the sound. It sounds so beautiful. 

And I'm going to read you a quote from the book, The Cruelest Miles by Gay and Lainey Salisbury, that's just talking about the dog culture in Nome at the time. “An attorney named Albert Fink, who years later would defend Al Capone, would tip his hat whenever he passed a husky he particularly respected. And he once managed to persuade a jury that his sled dog Peg was acting in self-defense when he slaughtered 28 sheep owned by the Pacific Cold Storage Company.” 

Sarah: Wow, that's some good lawyering. It's some good lawyering. Also, was that dog on trial? 

Blair: I think so. Like, there's no other explanation. I mean, it sort of seems like dogs are like people in this town. And I would love to have glimpsed that. That seems incredible. 

So in summer 1924 the doctor in Nome, whose name is Dr. Welch, is going through his inventory and putting in his orders for the last shipment of supplies that's going to come in by boat. And he notices that his diphtheria antitoxin is expired. Now, this is probably not a big deal because he's been there like 20 years and has never seen a case of diphtheria. But he puts in the order anyway. He's a very scrupulous guy. And when the last boat comes in, the antitoxin is not on it. 

So we start the winter without this medication. Dun, dun, dun. And he tries not to think about it. Like, okay, it'll probably be fine. He hasn't needed it in a long time. And again, they're so isolated, it's hard for diseases to come in, too.

Sarah: Mm hmm. And can you talk about what is diphtheria? 

Blair: Yeah, so let's talk about diphtheria for a moment. It is super contagious, and it can survive on surfaces for weeks. So it spreads very, very easily. And it's a bacteria that, I mean, I'm not a doctor so forgive my layperson's explanation, but it creates a toxin that kills the tissue in your respiratory system, in your throat. And then that dead tissue forms what's called a ‘pseudomembrane’, which is like a really thick scab. 

And at the time it was called the ‘Strangling Angel of Children’ because it really targets kids, and they slowly choke to death and it's a really terrible way to die. It's not, you know, I think it's like 10 percent fatal. So, so a number of people do get better on their own, but it's a really nasty, nasty illness.

Sarah: And is it like, do young children die especially often from it? 

Blair: Yeah, it targets kids. So healthy adults tend to be able to recover. And that fall, Dr. Welch begins to see a lot of tonsillitis, like more than usual. And he doesn't think that much about it. Like the kids, some of them are recovering. 

And then he sees a kid with a sore throat on December 14th. She's seven years old. Her name is Margaret Sulvida. And two weeks later, she died. And this is really concerning because kids do not normally die of a sore throat. So Dr. Welch is starting to get really concerned about the pattern he's seeing. In January, two more kids die. And on January 20th, he's visiting another sick kid, and he discovers something really scary. Which is that this kid has thick scabs blocking his throat. 

So Dr. Welch, he doesn't have a lab, he doesn't have a way to do a culture to see if this is really diphtheria, but it really looks like it is. And he does have a little bit of this antitoxin, but it's expired. And he's worried that it might even harm the kids, like maybe it's degraded, maybe it's dangerous. And even if he did use it, he only has enough for six kids. 

So he has 80,000 units of the serum. And if this is diphtheria that's spreading in Nome and in the surrounding areas. he's going to need at least a million to prevent an epidemic, to prevent mass death. So immediately when he reports this to the town. They jump into action. They institute a quarantine. School is canceled. 

All the kids are sent home. Buildings are marked with signs saying, “keep out” if someone sick is inside them. And Dr. Welch and his nurses, particularly a nurse named Emily Morgan, who did a ton of work on this, start trying to figure out how on earth they're going to get more of this medication to Nome when there's no efficient way for anything to get there at all.

Sarah: I mean, I'm also, do they have initial rough draft ideas like, let's take a zeppelin? 

Blair: Well, their first thing is they have to locate the serum. They can't necessarily assume that the nearest hospital is going to have a bunch of it. So the first thing Dr. Welch does, he starts making calls, and he's getting leaders across the state involved. And first they have to locate enough of the serum And then they have to figure out how they're going to get it across the frozen Alaskan interior to Nome, particularly in time to save these kids and to save all the other kids who are about to get sick.

Now, a doctor in Anchorage named Dr. Beeson finds 300,000 units, which is great. It's not enough, but it's not that far from Nome. It's still in Alaska, and it's a good start. Now, down on the west coast of the U.S. of the lower 48, the public health service is able to collect 1 million units from different medical facilities.

But first it has to get to Seattle, then it has to take a ship part of the way. And it's still going to need to get to Nome. So there's this close, smaller amount of serum, and then there's more that's farther away that'll take longer to get there. And their first priority is to get the 300,000 units to Nome as quickly as possible.

So Dr. Beeson, the doctor who found the serum in Anchorage, has an idea. And he's kind of well known, he's kind of famous because he once did a house call to a village by dog sled in the interior. And it took him a month, like two weeks of dog sledding to get in and two weeks of dog sledding to get out. So he saw how these dogs are able to cross really difficult terrain, push through difficult conditions. If a trail is blocked, they can find a way around, they can wait out storms. These dogs are pretty incredible. 

And he says, what if we send this anchorage serum by train to Nenana? and then arrange a dog sled relay the rest of the way to Nome, which is 675 miles. And the idea makes its way to the governor of Alaska, whose name is Governor Bone, which is a great name. And Bone has to decide, like, the decision rests on him. Are we going to send the serum by dog sled, or do we try to send a plane? And by the way, at this point, post gold rush, people have tried a lot of ways to travel in Alaska, because people are trying to get the gold. So people have tried horses, goats, bicycles, ice skates, passenger pigeons, hot air balloons, and reindeer, among other things. And I would say with middling success, if they have any success at all. These are not great ways to travel. 

So they've really exhausted their options and done a lot of experimenting. And there's also a lot of experimental bush flying going on around this time in Alaska. Like we're sort of entering the aviation age in this area. But mostly it's happening in summer, and the coldest that these planes have flown in is minus 10 degrees, which is pretty cold. But at this moment in Fairbanks, it's minus 50 degrees. And anti-freeze hasn't been invented. The plane's engine is cooled by water, which obviously can freeze. And oil gets really viscous in deep cold, so the winter flights that they've been doing, pilots have to land and set fires under the planes in order to warm them up again.

Sarah: Oh my god, I can see that being not entirely foolproof. 

Blair: Right? And the planes shake so much this whole time that bolts and screws are coming loose. They don't have a de-icing system. And probably the biggest problem is if they put the serum in a plane and the plane goes down, it might be lost forever.

Sarah: Yeah. Right. And also, like, what if there's weather? You know, it seems like you're gambling between a technology that's in its infancy, and a technology that has existed for who only knows how long, long enough for people to understand. You know how to do it in these conditions.

Blair: Absolutely right. And a lot of the mushers in Alaska at this time are native. So we have this deep well of native knowledge that's sort of being put up against like quote unquote “modern”, I would say dog sledding is very modern, too. I don't like that distinction, but you know, it's like are you going to trust this sort of ancient wisdom, or are you going to be too cool and too racist for it and get your shiny plane. 

Sarah: Which is such a classic American quandary where you're like, well, obviously it's very appealing for us to be racist, but what if there's mass death because of it? And often we're like, yeah, let's do it. 

Blair: Oh my God. Right. But dog sled relay has risks, too. It's slower. It typically takes 20 days for dog teams to travel this route. So that's a long time. That's a lot of kids who could die, compared to a plane that could get there very quickly. 

And conditions are really bad right now. It's minus 50. This is not weather that most mushers would choose to go out in because it's really dangerous. It's dangerous for the dogs. It's dangerous for the people. And dog sled relay is old school in a way that doesn't appeal to the hype of the day for people in cities. 

Sarah: The thoroughly modern Millie’s. Yeah. Can you talk, I mean, I don't think anyone out there is like, “I bet I do fine in negative 50”, but what specifically, what's the margin for error out there?

Blair: That's a really good way to put it. Because the colder it gets, the smaller the margin for error gets, until it's like, not even there at all. You know, if you take your glove off for a second, if your dog doesn't have the right protective gear. I mean, these dogs were a lot furrier than sled dogs now, probably. And so I can't actually speak to the dog's tolerance of these conditions, because my dogs are Alaskan Huskies and these are Siberians. And most mushers now use Alaskans, and they are slimmer and they're faster and they have less fur, so they need a lot more accommodations in deep cold. 

But, you know, certainly it can be dangerous for dogs as well. If you fall through ice into water, that's dangerous in any temperature. But in minus 50, that's a bad, bad deal. And that's something that happens. It's not uncommon out there. And it also just sort of hurts when you're out in that kind of temperature. It feels like you're being sort of stabbed anywhere there's a crease in your clothing or a seam and any sort of air is getting in. 

And I will mention also that these are air temperatures, not wind chill. So some of these places are going to be very windy and you're going to have a bunch of wind chill on top of air temperatures that are already absurdly cold. 

Sarah: It is really, it feels like extreme temperatures are going to become more and more a part of all of our lives as we continue to live on this planet. And I feel like part of the value in learning about or understanding extreme cold or extreme heat, one small aspect of it is that it really impresses upon you how narrow a range humans have, and how nice it would be to maintain it.

Blair: Yeah, absolutely. And then think about in extreme cold, at least, because most people haven't experienced it. The numbers become abstract. But think about the difference between 90 degrees and 20 degrees. Like 90 degrees is hot. That is too hot for me. I'm feeling sick in 90 degrees. Maybe some listeners here are much more acclimated and enjoy it. But like that is hot. 

And 20 degrees is cold. Like 20 degrees, it's snowing. That is a huge difference between 90 and 20 degrees, but that is a 70-degree difference. That's the same as the difference between 20 degrees and minus 50. It's a huge difference. And the difference between like minus 10, minus 20, is when mushers will start to admit it's cold.

We tend to have a lot of ego involved, so a lot of mushers, you won't hear them say it's cold. But once you get to minus 10, minus 20, they'll start to be like, “It's chilly out.” Like, that's sort of the code. If a musher says it's chilly, it means it's fucking cold. 

And this is way past chilly. It's way past musher chilly. You know, it's just a lot to handle. So there's a lot of risks to this dog sled relay. And Governor Bone decides we're doing it anyway. We're transporting the serum by dog sled. 

Sarah: He's like, I'm Governor Bone. I like to take risks. 

Blair: And this is not necessarily a popular decision. There's a newspaper editor in Fairbanks named Thompson, who is pissed because he's a real big proponent of aviation. He writes in the newspaper, it is demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that in cases of great emergency the dog should be allowed to sit by the fire and dream old days over and over again.

Sarah: Oh, shit. He's telling those dogs to retire. He really, really is. “Stand down, dogs, the airplanes are here.” Is he going to be proved wrong? We'll find out. We'll find out as he twirls his mustache. 

Blair: So the plan is the serum's going to go from Anchorage to Nenana on a train. That'll take it 300 miles. At that point, it'll still have 674 miles to go. And that distance is going to be by dog and musher. All these mushers are men. I actually am not sure what the deal is with female mushers at that time, if there were many. 

Sarah: Can I tell you one thing that I know that is a fact I treasure? I know I shared this with you at some point in the past. Because also at some point when we were in Nome, I bought a wonderful book called, Good Time Girls, about sex workers of the Alaska and Yukon Gold Rush.

Blair: I remember that. 

Sarah: And there was at least one woman who the book talked about who made, because one of the things this book describes, which is very inspiring, is that you could make so much money during the gold rush in sex work and showgirling. Because there were periods where men had so much gold that they didn't know what to do with it, and there wasn't anyone else around, and they would just like throw nuggets at you if you went on stage. Not violently. Gently. Underhand toss. Underhand. Yeah, exactly. Softball. 

And one of the women this book talks about became wealthy enough to have her own dog team that she would mush. Which I feel like is really a mark of success that you can, you know, afford to be a musher. 

Blair: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Now there is a lot of incredible female mushers. And the year I ran the Iditarod had a higher percentage of female mushers than ever. It was 30, I believe, that year. So it's male dominated. But I haven't gotten to the bottom of why there were no women in the serum run.

Sarah: I bet there are a bunch of very capable sex worker mushers who are like, “Excuse me”, and who didn't get the commission.

Blair: Maybe they disguised themselves and did part of the run. But so the plan is, the first half of the run is going to be a relay. There's going to be, I'm not sure how many mushers, but let's say a dozen. And they're dogs, and they're going to be taking it in short stints, like 20 miles, 50 miles, and each one then will hand off the serum to the next musher, just like a relay race, so that no one has time to get too tired, and it'll always be a fresh team that's carrying the medication.

And for the second half of the relay, the last over 300 miles, it's going to be carried by one musher and one dog team who is the fastest and most accomplished musher in Alaska And he is a Norwegian named Leonhard Seppala. And I will tell you about Seppala. He is a legend.

He has, at this point, he's won almost every race he's ever entered. He's broken a bunch of records. He is known for being so in tune with his dogs. And he's a goofball. Like in the summer, he has a cart that his dogs pull, and he calls it the Pupmobile. He walks down Front Street in Nome on his hands just to make kids laugh. And he has a lead dog named Togo, who he is inseparable with. So, wherever Seppala goes, his lead dog Togo goes. 

And Togo is as famous in Alaska as Seppala, but just like in the Disney movies, he was always a little bit different. He was an unlikely sled dog. He was the only puppy in his litter. And as a puppy he had these throat issues, which is sort of an interesting narrative parallel, I guess, to the story.

So most of his puppyhood, Seppala's wife, Constance, would just hold him and put warm rags on his throat and soothe him and baby him. And then maybe he was spoiled, maybe he wasn't, but as he got older, he became a delinquent. Like whenever Seppala left with the dog team, Togo would run after them and bite their ears. Which is just a real asshole move and he would harass the dogs.

And Seppla was like, this dog is not going to work for my team. He's too much trouble. So he sent Togo to a pet home. There was a woman who wanted a pet. He sends Togo to a pet home. This woman also spoils Togo. I mean, she's feeding him steak, just adoring him. Togo hates it. He jumps through a glass window to get away, and Seppala finds him back in the yard with the other sled dogs.

Sarah: Love it. He's like, someone save me from this life of luxury. 

Blair: Too much steak. The bed is too soft. So now clearly Togo's not willing to be a pet, but Seppala cannot keep this dog contained. He just is always harassing the other teams when they're going out and he's not smart about it. At one point he harasses a team of Malamutes who's running by, and he gets mauled by the Malamutes because he was being a jerk to them.

Sarah: Oh, Togo. Young Togo.

Blair: He is not learning his lesson. And so when he's eight months old, Seppala's like, okay, I have to go on this 160-mile trip. Whatever you do, he tells whoever's back at his kennel, do not let Togo loose. I do not want to deal with Togo. And so he puts Togo on a tether, a seven-foot fence all around him on this tether, and he's like, this dog cannot get out. And he goes on his journey and it's so peaceful, and he's loving the journey. It's so peaceful. There's no delinquent dog chasing them. It's so great.

Sarah: What a beautiful day.

Blair: It’s a beautiful day, until like 36 hours later when he sees a commotion on the trail in front of him. And who is there teasing his dogs? Togo. Who had broken his tether and left a seven-foot fence. And he's harassing reindeer, and the whole thing is a mess. So Seppala, he doesn't even know what to do. 

Sarah: He's calling the reindeer and hanging up, and delivering [inaudible] to their house. 

Blair: Yeah, exactly! Exactly. Yeah, he has spray paint in his back pocket. Seppala's like, he doesn't know what to do. So he has a harness. He like catches Togo and puts Togo in a harness and puts him in the back of the dog team.

And the thing about dog teams is that, you know, typically the way dog teams are run now it's like two by two by two by two, all the way up to the front of the team. And the farther back you put a dog, the less trouble they can get into. So if you have a dog who is annoying or immature or distractible, or is going to like chase cats or like whatever it is, you put them in the back.

Togo is sent to the back of the team, like the corner of the classroom. But as soon as the harness goes on him, his whole personality changes. He leans into it. He's super focused. And as they keep running, Seppala is so impressed that he keeps moving Togo farther and farther up the team to the front. Until finally, Togo is up at the front of the team, leading the team with another dog. And by the end of the day, he has pulled 75 miles in his very first day in harness. This is unheard of. He is a prodigy. 

Sarah: Yeah, and can you talk about what's more normal for a dog? 

Blair: Yeah, so normally we would wait till the dog is at least one year old. And then we would put a harness on them, and we would go half a mile, and then maybe we'd go a mile, and then you really gradually work your way up to it. I mean, the odds of a dog getting hurt if they're running 75 miles on their first day are pretty high. But I also trust Seppala that he knew Togo's conditioning and is able to watch that. Like I'm not suggesting otherwise, but it's just a very unlikely situation. It's usually, sled dogs know how to pull naturally, in the same way that a retriever knows how to get a tennis ball naturally, but you still ease them into it and you condition them. And like the harness feels funny to them, so they have to adjust to it. There's all these ways that they learn just like anyone learns a new skill. 

Sarah: Can I also ask you your favorite question? How do you get the dogs to run? 

Blair: How do we get the dogs to run? The answer to that is how do you get them to stop? Yeah, dogs want to run, they want to run They will be running unless you are physically stopping them at all times. Like when you stop you have to tie to a tree because if you don't, they will run whether or not you're attached. Like, they just want to go. It is their favorite thing. So, that is very easy. They might not run where you want them to go, but they will be running if they have a choice. 

So, that was Togo's puppyhood. This goofy prodigy. He's now 12 years old at the time of our story. So, he's like an elder states dog. And sled dogs tend to age very well. So it's not uncommon for a 12-year-old dog to run long distances, but I would say that's like right at the edge where it's becoming really uncommon. Like 10 or 11, you see it. 12, you're like pretty impressed. Like that's a story. If you have a 12-year-old dog, who's running hundreds of miles, it's, you know, they slow down just like we do.

Sarah: Have he and Seppala been a team this whole time? Like, has he been his lead dog ever since he was little? You know, a little bad boy. 

Blair: Yes, he has. They have traveled 55,000 miles together. 

Sarah: Oh my god. 

Blair: Which is so far. At one point, I mean, the stories about Togo are endless. There's a reason this dog is famous throughout Alaska. But at one point, Seppala and the team were crossing sea ice. And the ice they were on broke off from shore and they start drifting off to sea. And they're drifting for at least 12 hours on this ice flow, like just waiting to die. And then the wind changes and they're sort of blown close to shore, but they're not against shore. And it's like the only chance Seppala has to save his life and the dog's lives. But they're still like five or six feet from shore, which is too far to jump. And the water is frigid. He doesn't know what to do. 

He has this last ditch effort to save the team. He picks up Togo, he ties a rope to Togo's harness. And then he like chucks Togo over the open water, and Togo lands on shore. And he's like, maybe Togo can pull the entire ice flow to shore to save us. And Togo starts and then the line breaks, the line between them. And Togo sees that the line has broken and fallen into the water, the frigid water. He jumps into the water, picks up the line in his teeth, climbs back on shore, and pulls the line. Like holding onto it himself and pulls the entire ice flow to shore. So the entire team is saved. 

Sarah: Oh, my God. Togo! Ah! That's incredible. 

Blair: So, and he's a lead dog. And I want to also just talk for a moment here about lead dogs. Because that's something a lot of people have heard of when it comes to mushing, but they might not totally understand what it is. And I actually, I give talks sometimes to companies about sled dogs and leadership. Which is really fun because it's dog stories and there's always two things that surprise the audiences the most, because they have these ideas about what a lead dog must be. 

The first thing is that they think the lead dog must be the alpha dog, like the dominant dog. And you've done a You're Wrong About about alpha dogs, so your listeners know. But lead dogs are not necessarily dominant at all. People think they've fought their way to the front of the team, which is just, it's like, to me, that's like a male fantasy. It's just, it is just not true. 

Sarah: They've backstabbed their way into leadership. 

Blair: It doesn't work that way. Lead dogs are often quiet and shy and introspective. Their position at the front of the team has nothing to do with dominance. It has to do with liking having an open trail in front of them. It has to do with independence. Like, are they comfortable finding a route when they're not chasing another dog? Because they're pack animals. They like chasing each other. So it's somewhat rare that you find a dog who sees an open trail and thinks, I can do this on my own. I can find this path. And then the other dogs are able to follow them. 

So, they have a lot of skills, and they could be shy, and they could be quiet, and they could be submissive, and none of those have anything to do with their leadership abilities. They're good at finding the trail, breaking the trail in deep snow, navigating, setting a pace, listening to cues from the musher, pushing through storms, using their own instincts. And it's energizing for them in a way that other dogs on the team might find it exhausting to be making those decisions.

Sarah: It's like when Tina Brown took over Vanity Fair. 

Blair: I have no idea how that went, but yes, I'm going to agree. 

Sarah: It was great, because she's a lead dog. I mean, can you also talk for a second about the bond between musher and lead dog specifically? 

Blair: For sure. So I always relate it to, if you see a kindergarten class, or if you're a teacher and you participate in this, or if you're a kindergartner and you participate in this. But if you see a class walking down the street and there's a teacher on one end and a teacher on the other, and then all the little kids are holding hands. And they are like chaos, but they're between these two adults. That is sort of how I think of the relationship between musher and lead dog. Like, you are the adult on one end, and they are the adult on the other end. And they're not working for you. You're working with them. 

And the other thing, people have this fantasy of like a single lead dog, and it's actually very uncommon. Almost everyone uses two lead dogs at once. They like companionship. So there's always times where you might have one legendary leader like Togo, or I have a dog named Peppy who's just, she's not as famous as Togo, but she’s exceptional, she's extraordinary. But I will still put other dogs with her because she can like the company, or she can teach them. So there's almost always two upfront. It's not just like one single solitary lead dog who fought their way up there and is unilaterally making these decisions.

Sarah: It's almost like these ideas in masculinity culture about the natural order and leadership are made up by, you know, traumatized humans. 

Blair: I know, and then people try to use dogs to justify it. And I'm like, find a fictional metaphor, because these dogs are not supporting your theories at all.

They're just way more collaborative than people give them credit for. And fluid. A team is fluid. The dogs are moving around a lot, and they all have different skills. And one dog might only lead in blizzards and not really care to lead any other time, but go up there when there's a blizzard and that's when the team leans on them. So it's sort of like a very beautiful fluid thing. But then every now and then you have a prodigy like Togo, and Togo does it all. 

So Seppala is going to be doing the hardest and longest part of this relay by a long shot. And that's partly because he's so fast, he's the fastest musher in Alaska and his dogs are the fastest. And also because he and Togo are the most qualified, because this is the most dangerous stretch of the trail. They're going to be crossing the frozen Norton Sound, which is sea ice. And other mushers would probably have to go around shore, which would add a whole day to the trip. This means Seppala is starting in Nome, mushing 300 miles down, picking up the serum, and mushing 300 miles back. It is a long run when the other teams are doing like 20 to 50 miles. 

So Seppala immediately starts preparing on the other side of the route. The other dog teams start preparing. The serum arrives in Nenana. It's wrapped in fur. It has these instructions pinned to it that every time the mushers trade it off at a roadhouse - which are these sort of shelter cabins, places where travelers can stop along the trail - they have to warm it up by the fire so it doesn't freeze too deep. Although obviously it's going to freeze. And then off it goes.  And like once it's gone, no one's going to know where it is. It's just going to, you know, you just have to trust this relay is working. 

So the first musher is a guy called Wild Bill Shannon. He has a 50-mile stint, and he is known for being wild. Like if you're called ‘Wild Bill’ at this point in Alaska, you're pretty wild.

Sarah: It's not a clever name. It's just literal. 

Blair: He has a nine-dog team. They're pretty young. Most of them are like two years old and conditions are awful. It's 50 below zero and horses have been on the trail. And, while this is a real problem, if a moose has been on the trail, there's these things called moose holes, which are just these deep, cylindrical holes that a dog can step in and twist their ankle. And I have never shared a trail with horses, but I imagine it's exactly the same, that they would punch these deep, small holes in the trail. And it's really dangerous for dogs to run on that. So not great conditions. 

Wild Bill steers off the trail. He's on a river thinking that that's safer. He gets caught on black ice. He's getting dangerously hypothermic. Like if it's 50 degrees on the riverbank, it's always, always colder once you go down on the river ice. And he's not showing up. At the next place people start to get worried. When he finally arrives at that roadhouse, it's 62 below, his face has turned black because the tissue has died from frostbite, and unfortunately three of his dogs have serious cold injuries as well. So already things are not looking good. 

But they hand off the serum to the next musher whose name is Edgar Callens. And I really want to emphasize here that these are not conditions that mushers or teams would choose to run in unless it was a life or death situation. You know, they were pushing on through these conditions. The mushers were making this decision, putting themselves and putting the dogs in this position because they were trying to save countless kids from dying a terrible death. So very sadly, those three dogs from Wild Bill's team ended up passing away, and he took a long time to recover from his cold injuries.

And you know, I have to say in my 15 years of mushing and talking to old timers and talking to veterinarians, the cold injuries these dogs had are not something I've ever even heard of a dog having, even in temperatures down to like minus 40, minus 50. So it just reinforces for me how incredibly extreme those conditions are. I mean, horrific. And whenever Wild Bill talked about the run, all these mushers were asked about the serum run for the rest of their lives, he would always, always, always talk about those three dogs, whose names were Cub, Jack, and Jet. 

Meanwhile the diphtheria is spreading in Nome and the whole country is watching. They're rapt and they're horrified, and people want to help, but they can't. The whole country is just holding its breath. And at this point, seeing how things are going, Governor Bone makes a new decision. He changes his mind about Leonhard Seppala doing half of the stuff on his own. And he decides the whole relay should be made only with short stints.

However, Seppala has already started mushing, Seppala and Togo. And there's no way to contact him. So they can only hope that somebody along the way who knows this new plan is going to intercept him. Meanwhile, because they're hoping to add more mushers to the second half of the run, they call another musher near Nome called Gunnar Kaasen, who is also Norwegian. And I'm not totally sure what his deal is, if he's a handler, an assistant, or a junior musher, or just a musher who works with Seppala, but they tell him to get ready. And for some reason he is using Seppala's remaining dogs rather than his own team. It seems like he doesn't have his own dogs. 

And Seppala has given explicit instructions that if someone takes a team from his remaining dogs for any reason, the lead dog should be a dog named Fox, who's very experienced. And this is an important rule of mushing, which is that if a musher tells you to do something one way with their dogs, you do not mess with that. They know their dogs better than you do. It doesn't have to make sense to you. Like you do what they tell you. So it's like a huge, I mean, if you don't do what a musher says, feed the dogs this way and it doesn't make sense to you and you do it differently. Like that's it. Like that could end a friendship. 

But Gunnar decides, what the heck? I'm not going to listen to Seppala. I'm not going to take Fox as my lead dog. Seppala is not here to stop me. And he picks a dog who he thinks is cool to be his leader, and that dog's name is Balto. 

Sarah: And there he. 

Blair: And there he is. So according to this new plan, Gunnar and his secret lead dog Balto, are supposed to take the second to last portion of the relay to Nome. And he takes his team, he gets situated, and he's just waiting for the serum to arrive. Seppala, he's still mushing 300 miles, he has no idea what's going on. And the relay continues.

A musher named Edgar Callens delivers the serum to Manly Hot Springs. His hands are frozen to the sled when he gets there, and they have to pour boiling water on him. In Calteg, there's a musher named Tommy Patsy who picks up the serum and takes it to this final portage over the coast, which is like 70 miles. And I'm fond of that stretch because I once got trapped there for like two days. But once you get over this landmass, then you see the coast and there's storms rolling off the coast and it's very intense. 

He makes it to Unalakleet. He gives the serum to a musher named Miles Ganangnam. And Miles now has a decision to make. Is he going to cross the sea ice, which is what Seppala would have done, or is he going to stay on the shore and go the longer route? And the sea ice is shifting, it's dangerous, he decides to go on shore. And he doesn't know that at this exact time, Seppala and Togo are on the other side, and have decided to cross the ice. They're going to miss each other. 

So, Gnangnang, he has a tough run, heavy drifts, he finally arrives in the next village, Shaktoolik, and he passes the serum to a musher named Henry Ivanov. And at this point, everyone figures they've missed Seppala. Like, who knows where Seppala is. But Seppala is still crossing the sound and he sees the team in distress. And he's like, I'm trying to save all the children of Nome. I do not have time to help you with your reindeer. So he's planning on just ignoring this team. Like, he's going to mush on by. Like, they can fix themselves. And as he's mushing by, sort of, not super close to this team, the musher waves his arms desperately and screams, “I have the serum! I have the serum!” And flags down Seppala. 

Sarah: Oh my god. 

Blair: And the serum gets passed into Seppala's hands. Now is Seppala even supposed to have the serum at this point? Nobody knows. It's chaos. But they now have the hardest portion of the trail. And they get caught in a blizzard offshore where there's water spraying up between cracks in the ice. The surface is heaving beneath them. They cross the section of ice, and after they get off it, the whole thing floats out to sea. 

They have to climb a series of ridges to the top of a mountain called Little McKinley, and they do it all beautifully. Back in Nome, of course, Dr. Welch is just watching and waiting and panicking. And he sees this bad weather coming in, he sees the storms, he knows how dangerous it is. And he begins to second guess the whole thing. Because he is afraid that if a musher goes off course, the serum will be lost permanently and it's not worth it. So he calls the Board of Health, and he asks them, please end the relay. Cancel it. Just save the serum, we'll find another way to get it here, we'll wait till conditions are better. 

And the Board of Health says, okay, good idea. We're going to cancel the relay. But they can't reach the mushers. Nobody has a way to tell the mushers that the relay's canceled, just like they couldn't reach Seppala and tell him they didn't want him to do 600 miles, like, Gunnar Kaasen, the musher who took Balto, is sitting there waiting. He's supposed to get that message and he does not. So he's sitting at a roadhouse, he's waiting for a musher named Olsen. 

And when Olsen arrives, things are looking bad. You know, at this point, you know the pattern. These are bad conditions. Nobody's finishing their run wanting to do it again. Except for Seppala, maybe. And Olsen's hypothermic. Gunnar helps Olsen and all his dogs into the heated room. And Olsen is like, whatever you do, do not go into that storm. It has hurricane force wind. Like, do not leave this shelter. You're going to lose the serum. And you know, Kaasen, does he like listening to people? No. We’ve learned this about him. He's like, whatever. And he goes into the storm. 

And it, it's just a mess, he's in snow chest deep. The dogs are swimming in powder. They cross a river, they get caught in overflow. And they get caught in a blowhole, which is like this wind tunnel with 70 miles per hour wind. And the sled keeps getting rolled off the trail. The team is being blown around. Kaasen just keeps dragging them back into place. And as he's doing it, he realizes the serum isn't on the sled anymore. 

Sarah: Oh my god. 

Blair: And he's in this wind tunnel. He can't see, the dogs are being blown around, he's being blown around. The sled is rolling like a tumbleweed for miles. Like how far back did he lose the serum? How will he possibly find it? And he just starts crawling. Just crawling, stretching his arms out. I mean, imagine what you would do. Like, just flattening himself, trying to touch every surface possible, praying, terrified. He searches, and he searches, and he searches, and then his hand touches something hard, and it's the serum.

Sarah: Oh my god. 

Blair: He finds the package, and he's able to get it back to the sled. He ties it back on and they make it through the blowhole. The conditions get better, and they make it to safety, which is the last stop before Nome. 

And Sarah, one of the pleasures of being on your podcast is that I can tell your audience about things you do that you don't tell them.

Sarah: It's true. 

Blair: So I want to share a cute thing Sarah did a couple years ago when she was staying with us for a while, and I was finishing my book, Dogs on the Trail, which is a book about life with a sled dog team. 

Sarah: It's a beautiful book. 

Blair: Oh, thank you. I was stressed about it, and I was under deadline, and just overthinking everything. And Sarah goes, “You've made it to safety. You're so close. You've made it to safety. You're almost to Nome in this book editing process.” And the roadhouse at safety now has dollar bills taped all over the ceiling. Like people just attach dollar bills to the ceiling and walls. So Sarah taped a bunch of dollar bills to the ceiling in our house. And one of them is still there two years later. And people are always like, why is there a dollar taped to your ceiling? And I'm like, it is because Sarah told me I'm in safety and I'm so close to Nome. And that reminds me that when things are hard, you're in safety, you're in safety, you're going to make it to Nome.

Sarah: Sarah believes in you. I, God, I really do. I believe you could go 55,000 miles. You've probably gotten some significant portion of that. 

Blair: I don't think so. I think in my biggest, like a very big mushing year is like 5,000 miles. 

Sarah: Well, you know, many of us mush zero miles per year, you know. Many of my listeners, in fact, if you can believe it, though not all of them.

Blair: I wonder which of your listeners has mushed the farthest. Please write in and tell us. 

Sarah: I am so excited to learn that. I suspect that podcasts are like, especially beloved by people who have to spend a lot of time working on their own in a way that allows them to listen to something. And that's mushers, baby.

Blair: I know there's mushers who listen to this. Because I'm friends with them. So, you know, it's on. 

Sarah: But yeah, I am so happy that dollar is still there. And, you know, you really are always in safety. Because you always have amazing projects going and one of them is always drawing close to completion. The dollar is true. 

Blair: Well, someday it'll flutter down and it'll mean like, you know, we made it. Anyway, that's safety. That's safety. Safety is like you are close. You're close to your deadline. You're going to be done. This horrible thing is going to not... Well, this is a horrible thing or like the stressful thing or whatever you're trying to do, it's going to be over. 

Sarah: However, I also think a lot about something I remember you saying, which is that it's so hard to get from the couch to the bed at night, because it's safety to Nome. 

Blair: It is safety to Nome. I hate it. If I get too tired on the couch, I just want to give it. I do not want to move to bed, and you have to brush your teeth.

Sarah: Yeah, I know. It's almost impossible to do these things. So it's like you're almost there, but also you're almost there. 

Blair: Sometimes that last stretch is the hardest stretch. Yeah. So, Gunnar reaches safety, Gunnar Kaasen, with Balto in lead. And the roadhouse at safety is dark. The lights are off, which means the musher waiting there, Ed Rohn, is asleep. And the protocol is to go in and wake him up, and pass off the serum. And then Rohn would take his fresh team and continue on to Nome. 

But Kaasen decides not to. And the reason he gives is he says that it will take too long for Rohn to hook up a new team, that he just figured he could get there faster than if Rohn hooked up a new team. But it's also true that if Kaasen skips Rohn, if he doesn't hand off the serum, he's going to be the one who carries it into Nome and gets all the glory. 

And I don't know if that was his reasoning, but I think there's a strong argument to be made. Because I'm inclined to think that it doesn't take that long to hook up a team, right? And then a fresh team is always faster than a team that's been running. So I mean, there's even races that have sourdough starts where the mushers all start in their sleeping bags and a whistle blows and then they hook up their teams as quickly as they can. And you can do it in minutes if you're very experienced. So Kaasen deciding not to stop. I'm inclined to think his explanation is not fully accounting for his decision and that he wanted the glory for himself. 

Sarah: And I feel like over time you come to believe that like, no, it was entirely because of the timing issue. But even subconsciously, even if you believe that your reason is something else on some level, I'm sure you're still like, but this way I'll judge the “make your own bikini contest”.

Blair: Right. Or if he's like, “Look, my dogs are doing well. I can do it.” And then he's like, I don't know. It'd be cool. I mean, it would be cool, right? Of course, it'd be cool to be the last team to come in. And if his dogs looked good, he'd continue on. 

But anyway, later there's going to be a lot of debate about this. And he always sticks by his story. But you know, there's some who do not fully buy that it's the full explanation. 

Sarah: One of his dogs spoke out. 

Blair: So he just slips by in the night. He slips past the roadhouse. He doesn't wake up the other musher. And the last 20 miles are easy. I mean, you know. You could get a storm or something, but they're flat, they're pretty smooth, and the wind is behind him. So he gets to Nome at 5:30 in the morning on February 2nd with Balto leading the way. 

Sarah: Trotting into history. 

Blair: Trotting into history. And this relay has carried the serum in an incredibly short time. Normally it takes almost 20 days for dog teams to cover this distance, but they have done it in five days and seven hours.

Sarah: Oh my God. 

Blair: Within a few hours, the serum is thawed and ready to use. And they're still going to have to get more serum there, like there's more plans, but the worst of the epidemic is averted. 

Sarah: Wow. It's also like, it makes sense that the rest of America followed this so closely, because we had just been through such a giant epidemic, and it feels like we would be fascinated by the hope that something like that on a smaller scale could actually be averted.

Blair: Yeah, absolutely. And the 1918 flu was horrific in Alaskan villages. I was actually up in Unalakleet when COVID hit, and people were talking about it. And there was one woman there who said that in her village only four people had survived the flu. 

Sarah: Oh my God. 

Blair: And I think it was her grandmother who was one of them. She had been a little kid and one of the only survivors in the entire village. So the memory was deeply traumatic and very fresh, and I'm sure it was on people's minds as they were figuring out how to save these kids. Now, of course, the country had been following along, holding its breath. And there was instant national glory for, I would say, all the dogs and mushers, but particularly for Kaasen and Balto. The publicity around the run helped to get diphtheria vaccines popularized in the U.S. 

Sarah: Ah, the great diphtheria vaccine fad. 

Blair: Exactly. So in the next couple decades, it was basically eliminated from the United States. Mail came from all over the country to Nome, most of it addressed to Balto. The newspaper in Nome published an apology because they couldn't publish all of the children's poems to Balto because they ran out of space. 

And most of the mushers and dogs who had been in the run just sort of returned to their daily lives. Like a lot of them were young. They were 18, 19, 20 years old. And when interviewed, a lot of them would say it was sort of a day in the life. Like it wasn't actually that different from a lot of what we had to do and, and lives were on the line all the time where they'd be carrying people who needed medical care, and this was another instance of that. 

The last surviving serum run musher, his name is Lanner, and he died in 1999. He had been 20 in the serum run. He had more than 200 grandkids at the time he passed away. Which is also, I would say Togo had a lot of children as well.

Sarah: That's great. So we love to see it.

Blair: Do you remember the editor in Fairbanks who thought the dog should sit by the fire and retire?

Sarah: Yes, I do. 

Blair: He had to eat his words and he wrote in the newspaper. We believe in the airship, and we believe in the dog. The airship will go when it can, but the dog seems to go whether he can or not. We take our hat off to the dog. It's so beautiful. And Kaasen and Balto are instant national celebrities. They get a movie deal, they get a national tour, there's of course the statue of Balto in Central Park, which I loved as a kid, and is featured in the Balto movie. And a promoter ends up buying the team. I don't know what a promoter is, but it's shady. These dogs become celebrities in a way that it is not great for a dog to become a celebrity. Or for anyone vulnerable, you know, like you have to worry. 

Sarah: Yeah. What happens? What are their lives like?

Blair: Well, I'll get to that. But what's going on with Seppala and Togo at this time, Togo has gone missing. So Seppala is not involved in this hubbub at all because he's afraid Togo died. I mean, he's worried that someone shot him and thought he was a wolf, or he got caught in a trap.

And he's just searching desperately for his best friend. And then after a week Togo just walks home. Like, he had just been that adventure wasn't enough. I had another one. I love Togo. So all is well with Togo. You know, and Seppala is like not thrilled. with the media attention because newspapers are giving Balto credit for things that Togo did.

There's this weird question about whether Colossus skipped the last mush or on purpose. And also like, you know, Seppala is really proud of Togo and he feels like Togo should be honored for what he did. And Balto did great things too. No bad dogs. They're all great. But like Togo did a lot. And deserves his recognition as well.

But actually, in the end, Togo sort of ends up better off. Like, Balto and his teammates, remember that quote unquote “promoter”? They end up in a sideshow in Los Angeles. And people can pay a dime to go into a room and see them. And it is not a good place for a sled dog or any dog. 

And they're there for a while until someone finds them and rescues them, buys them for $20,000, does a national campaign to raise money, and the dogs are rescued. They're brought to much, much better conditions. So it has a happy ending, but it's also very sad that they just sort of had slipped through the cracks like that. 

Sarah: Yeah, and that Balto, the hero dog, is destroyed by the wheel of fame, much like Judy Garland.

Blair: Yeah, right. I mean, it's like once you become someone who makes money for other people, they don't really care what condition you're in. Yeah. Togo does well. Togo just keeps being a sled dog up in Alaska. Good for Togo. That's his life. That's what he's meant for. That's what he loves. And he's getting older.

You know, the serum run, he was 12. So he's slowing down, but he runs as long as he's able to. And Seppala said this, it’s beautiful. It's sad. It makes me cry, but it's beautiful. Seppala said, “It was a sad parting on a cold, gray March morning when Togo raised a small paw to my knee, as of questioning why he was not going with me.” When he stopped being able to go on runs. But Togo, he had a beautiful old age. He lived to the ripe old age of 16, sleeping by the fire with the people he loved. So may we all have that kind of old age. 

Sarah: Yeah, and may we not end up in a sideshow. Never. 

Blair: In our old age. Never. No sideshows. The last official dog sled mail in Alaska was delivered in 1963. Which I think is surprisingly recently by a musher named Chester Noonglok on St. Lawrence Island. And at that point, sled dogs just sort of were being replaced by machines. Like, they were not nearly the sled dogs that there were before. They eat a lot of food and it's like a machine, you turn a key. And sled dogs are a lot of work and they have personalities and it's a whole relationship you have with the team. It's not like a car you can park in your garage or a snowmobile. 

So they started fading out and there was actually concern for a while that sled dogs were going to basically go extinct. And so a lot of people have heard of the Iditarod race, which is a thousand-mile race across Alaska by dog sled, and believe it commemorates the serum run. Which it doesn't really, it actually was developed to save sled dogs when sled dogs were in danger of going extinct and to save the lifestyle of long distance mushing.

And it was very effective. It made a big difference. You know, this race sort of rekindled interest and now, I live in Northern Wisconsin, although I spend a lot of my time in Alaska, and in a town of 500, we have three mushers. There's a lot of mushing that's sort of being rekindled. There's a lot of urban mushing, which is dogs pulling. If you have one or two pet dogs in a city, you can have them pull you on a bike or a scooter. And I think it's really interesting to see how mushing is going to change. But it's also very healthy now. I really believe sled dogs are very healthy. They're very healthy dogs. People fall in love with them, and they had this brush with extinction, and now there's beautiful communities built around them again. 

So the Iditarod. It's linked to the serum run, it follows some of the same route. It was not established in honor of the serum run. However, one of the most highly respected awards in the entire race, at least among mushers, I don't know if casual spectators probably don't follow this, but it's the Humanitarian Award. Which is chosen by veterinarians, and it's just exceptional dog care, exceptional bond with your team. Just the best dog care out of everyone in the race. There's so many mushers who are just doing everything they can for their dogs. And it is called the Leonhard Seppala Award. So that's a huge honor that goes on to this day. 

Sarah: Yeah. And I feel like they're all good dogs, but by making it the story of one hero dog, instead of emphasizing that there were really these two remarkable lead dogs, and then all the other dogs and the teams working together to make this possible. It feels like what the Balto story that I grew up with and seeing as more connected to the Iditarod, than it is kind of hides is that this isn't a story about individual excellence so much as what the bond between a team and between dog and human can do. 

Blair: Absolutely. And it's that same instinct where people want to think there's one lead dog who's bossing around the whole team. Like there's, there's one representative. This wasn't Togo's serum run, and it wasn't Seppala's, and it wasn't Balto's, and it wasn't any one person's or any one dog's. It was an incredible teamwork effort. I think by the end there were 20 different mushers who were involved. That means 20 different teams and every one of them deserves that kind of praise. We like to choose a figurehead and give them the credit, but it's always more collaborative than that. 

Sarah: Yeah, and I feel like that's something that I love about the way you talk about mushing is that, from the time I first met you, it feels like you always lead with emphasizing the fact that you are privileged to join their world.

Blair: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I was just talking to someone the other day because they were talking about mushing, and I was trying to explain that I will put myself through a lot, and it is not necessarily fun for me in the typical sense all the time. But I will not do that to my dogs. Like, I want them to be having fun all the time, but I will put myself through a lot so I can be there out with them and learn from them and see things with them. And I don't know. It's just incredible to see their instincts and experience the world as they do.

Sarah: Yeah. And to kind of, it seems like, be out in a place where they're totally in their element and you get to share that with them. 

Blair: You've been mushing. How do you feel like it is? 

Sarah: It feels like you get to be part of their joy and you get to be part of their secret world, you know? And I feel very grateful to the dogs for letting us into that. I love that. Their secret world.

Blair: That is what it feels like. You know, they have their secrets, but sometimes they let us in on them.

Sarah: Yeah, well, they're not very sneaky. Blair Braverman, you are our survival correspondent. I am so lucky to know you. You're the person who taught me I wasn't entirely an indoor girl. And you've written a book called, Small Game. You've got just always a ton of great projects going on in addition to whatever adventures you're planning with your dogs. What, what are you up to these days? 

Blair: Well, I have some dog projects in the works. And some book projects in the works. And none of them are quite at the announcement level yet, but I cannot wait to tell you when they are. So in the meantime, my novel Small Game came out in paperback on October 3rd. And if you want to learn more about dog sledding, my husband and I have a book called, Dogs on the Trail, which has a lot of photos. It's very kid friendly, and it just follows a year in the life of a sled dog team and shows you behind the scenes. So, if you're intrigued by this episode, that's one way you can learn more. 

Sarah: And you can look at pictures of Pepe. 

Blair: They're really cute. And Sarah's in it. Pictures of Sarah. She's also really cute. 

Sarah: It is really, it's such a beautiful book, and I don't know. I think it's such a special book because I can imagine the kids especially who get to see it and feel like this way of life is in reach for them because they have photographic evidence of it.

Blair: Well, if you want to brainwash your child into becoming a musher, you have more options beyond Balto the Bravest Dog Ever. 

Sarah: Aww. And you did that for us. 

Blair: You can branch out. 

Sarah: As I once did. Thank you so much for everything, Blair. 

Blair: Oh, thank you, Sarah. I miss you. 

Sarah: I miss you, too. 

Blair: Well, the dogs say, “hi”. They love you very, very much.

Sarah: Hi, dogs! And you can please tell them, tell them I love each and every one of them. 

Blair: I will play the podcast for them, so they hear your voice.