My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [17]
Inside the bar, Steve’s wife, Annette, was retelling the story of Kathy Swenson’s epic battle with the moose. Annette had always liked Kathy.
“She doesn’t put on airs like Mr. Champion Rick Swenson.”
We stayed at Angel Creek for four hours, eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. Our gloves, mitts, and face masks dangled from the rafters, drying above the lodge’s big barrel stove. The Mowth and I toasted each other as Steve bitched about damn mushers and their smelly gear.
By the time we repacked the sleds, the lodge thermometer read 15 below. Practically tropical. The wind was also rising, causing loose straps on my sled bag to flap.
This time we loaded bullets in the rifle. Packing the gun, the Coach left first, again running Chad in single lead. I followed with Rainy and Casey up front. As it turned out, we didn’t need the rifle. We had a clean run home.
The skittish brown and grey female wasn’t impressive to look at. She appeared to be too small. What first caught my attention was Rainy’s ability as an escape artist. Dealing with a couple dozen sled dogs, it wasn’t uncommon for one to get loose now and then. The event always triggered a ruckus. Frenzied barks. Dogs rushing out of their houses to join in the joyful prancing. Our escapee nearly always stayed nearby, darting through the kennel, visiting friends, or sniffing the food buckets.
The cause behind a breakout was usually obvious. Most often, a dog had slipped its collar. Chad was particularly good at that. He’d back up and pop the collar over his ears. The empty collar would be lying there, still hitched to the chain. Broken snaps were another common cause for escapes. Or a snap jammed with ice or dirt.
Not so with Rainy. She didn’t shed her collar. There was never anything wrong with her snap. The empty chain would be lying there, discarded in the dirt. Rainy never strayed far. But that didn’t mean she was easy to find. She liked crawling into other houses. The only giveaway was the excited reaction of other dogs nearby.
One afternoon I heard crying from the lot. Truly woeful whimpering. It was Rainy’s neighbor, Daisy, a shy black dog hardly bigger than a pup. She was immobilized between two chains, both of which were clipped to her collar. Our little escape artist was good at her craft.
Rainy’s breeding records hinted at qualities beyond what met the eye. The bloodlines of our little five-year-old female spanned the mushing world. Her lineage included dogs from kennels owned by former Quest winner Bill Cotter, sprint champions Bill Taylor and Gareth Wright, Isaac Okleasik, the Lee family, Earl Norris, and, of course, Old Joe Redington, Sr.
Rainy wasn’t affectionate. She often hid in her box or watched us from behind a tree. A transformation occurred in her when she observed preparations for a run. Seeing me carrying harnesses or moving the sled into position, she’d cry out and rise on her hind legs, pawing the air as she strained against her chain.
Placed in lead, Rainy displayed a new, bossy side. It didn’t matter how big her partner might be, the little female was always in charge. And she was a hard worker, staying out front, bending her little shoulders to the task.
Her shy tendencies didn’t apply to sex. Rainy was attracted to any dog within reach. Large or small. Male or female. Given a chance, she’d hump them all. And she’d knock males out of the way to sniff females in heat. We dubbed her Deadline Dog Farm’s resident lesbian.
Without realizing it, we came to rely on Rainy. We spent more time discussing Chad and Raven’s behavior, Rat’s dishonesty, and arguing about Harley’s potential. The little lesbian’s importance to our kennel was revealed the night I totaled the training miles logged on our kitchen chart. Rainy was the kennel’s mileage leader by a substantial margin. As the race drew near, she had recorded over a thousand miles of conditioning—two thirds of that distance as a lead dog.
The morning after our run to Angel Creek she was limping. She might have caught her wrist in a moose hole. Or she could have stumbled crossing a creek.