In a few weeks the billboards and posters will start going up in our area announcing the dates for the upcoming sled dog races in Ashton and Jackson. It’s always funny to us that they use Siberian Huskies as the “poster children” because in a sense it is false advertising.

Most people who are new to the sport are surprised (I know I was) when they see that racing sled dogs don’t typically look like our team and definitely don’t look like the billboards.

They tend to look more like this.

Most mushers race Alaskan Huskies which do have some Siberian in them but they also have a few other things mixed in, like Labrador and Greyhound.

Some don’t look like huskies at all!

Why wouldn’t they just race purebred Siberian Huskies? Well, because Siberians are slow compared to Alaskans and they want to win, of course! Some of these races pay out tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, so these mushers are in it to win it, baby.

We don’t run our team to win any prizes and we don’t even enter them in the local races. We just do it for fun (for us and for them). And we look pretty doing it, just like the billboards.

We also love taking ours to the local races to let the spectators meet them and to let our pups watch the pros.

They love it just as much as we do (if not more!).