While some changes in mushing come from development in the sport, others have been forced by a changing climate. One part of the story is told in the DNA of the dogs.
Sled dogs line up along the frozen Kuskokwim River for the start of the 2025 Holiday Classic sled dog race on Jan. 16, 2025.
“She was the one who originally had dogs back then for transportation,” remembered Erhart. “Everybody had dogs.” Today, Erhart’s dog team and the life he leads as an Alaskan musher is a game of telephone away from what it was mere generations ago. A series of, in some cases, literal mutations have re-molded the mushing his dad remembers.
Suddenly, new traits emerged as favorable in the sled dog gene pool. A dog that was lean and fast and could muster a lot of energy was the kind of dog you needed to win a race. Around the early 1900s, the breeding game began. Genes from dogs in climates around the world entered the mix to match the Arctic’s shifting conditions. The Alaskan huskies have been mixed and matched with Irish setters, greyhounds, German shorthaired pointers, and Saluki hounds.On the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, musher Myron Angstman was a long-time competitor in the K300 and now chairs the race’s committee.
“And they’d look at the dog and they say, ‘Boy, that’s a fast dog,’” Angstman remembered. “And so rather than breed those, interbreed those with the slow dogs from the villages, they would often just breed the ones from Anchorage and Fairbanks with another Anchorage, Fairbanks dog. So they did a whole team full of faster dogs. And so the changeover was quick and dramatic.”
Southwest Alaska Sled Dog Bethel Carl Erhart Climate Change K300 Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race Sled Dog Racing
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