I am the earth.
I am the sky.
I soar above hills. I swoop through valleys.
I am a free spirit.
I am a god.
“Mush!” my 9-year-old yells.
I am an idiot ...
Somehow I let her maneuver – whether she intended to or not – me into becoming the “human sled dog.”
It all started about a month ago – long before the March 1 start date for the Iditarod dogsled race in Alaska (not that I think she’s aware even now that it’s under way). She happened upon – and pulled out – my wife’s old hammock stored away in the shed.
It’s a free-standing type, meaning it’s a piece of canvas stretched across two poles. The poles in turn warp underneath to give it support. From a distance the frame looks like the skeleton – has the aerodynamic look to it – of a boat.
But to my daughter, names like schooner, sail, pontoon and ski (boat) might as well be words like patience, understanding, forbearing and listening. In other words: Things she’ll never be accused by me of having or doing.
To her, it was a dogsled plain and simple. And our dogs were the perfect team regardless of the fact one of them (a mix of German Shepherd and Scottish terrier) (How weird is that?) is about 30 pounds overweight, one (a rat terrier) can’t seem to pull her way out of my daughter’s bed in the morning (although she is real good at climbing fences) and the last ... well, he’s mine.
He’s a real dog. He’s an Australian shepherd – a beautiful mix of black and gray with just a dab of tan added in – and was a pretty good candidate. By the way, this all stemmed from her on-off infatuation with the animated movie series Balto; based on a real-life sled dog. In case you haven’t heard the story, he became a hero when he led a team through a blizzard to get desperately needed medicine to Nome, Alaska where a fatal diptheria epidemic had broken out. (There is an actual statute of him in New York, which I get hit up by my daughter quite regularly to go and see.) Anyway, you can imagine. Three dogs that don’t have a clue.
She tried putting the heavyset one, Jessie, at lead. She – the dog, that is – just sat, which is exactly what she does when you’re out walking and decides she’s tired (which is about 10 feet; no kidding). She tried putting the small one, Ollie, on point. It might as well have been a hamster.
She put mine, Bandit, up there, and he could do it. He just didn’t want to. He’s not quite a year old yet and is more like that dog on the animated movie Over the Hedge. Even if you didn’t see the flick, all you’ve got to know is the word: “Play!”
Everything to him is “Play!” “Here’s your dog food.” “Play!” “Sorry bud but you’ve got to have a bath.” “Play!”
So her hooking him up to the front, then turning her back and running around to get on the sled always prompted the same response: Him behind her all the way, his facial expression saying: “Play!”
To add to her problem was the fact she didn’t have a harness like a true sled dog team would. She was using leashes. Can you say “tangled mess?” One would go this way, one would go that and she would end up looking like a mummy all wrapped up in a nice, tidy package. (Yes, the temptation to leave her that way was strong.)
Finally, I showed her a way to make it work: I ran in front of him. Now, have you ever seen a dog of that type work, I mean actually work in the field, doing what they were bred to do? I used to have a border collie before him and my older children can tell you exactly what they do when you run. They herd you. They herd you by nipping you on the back of the leg. It hurts. It hurts bad. But he’s good. They, this type of breed, never break the skin.
So for me to run in front of him, especially when he couldn’t reach me, was a whole lot like saying: “Play! ... Play with a 1,000 sheep!”
He was intense! And when he broke the tip off the leash at one point, I was intense, too. In intense pain.
And that might have been the end of it, but no. She was a long way off from satisfying her trailblazing urge. “Please, daddy.” And so, feeling sorry for him – his tongue dangling like a side of beef (oh wait, that was mine) – and her (that’s right, a sucker for both), I said: “Give me that,” and set him free to roam the vast world of the “closed-in” back porch. Then I took the leash and off I went – the human sled dog.
Now it’s I who traverses jagged mountain ranges, frozen rivers (quoting the official Iditarod website), dense forest, desolate tundra, against temperatures below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow and long hours of darkness.
Which translated into my world, and to use my daughter’s own words, goes something like is:
“Why aren’t we going anywhere?”
“Why do you keep falling down?”
“Hold your arms up above your head.” (Payback for what I tell her all the time when she’s out of breath during taekwondo lessons.)
“Why? What’s wrong with your back?”
“Yes. Why?” (To the question: “Do you know CPR?”)
Iditarod my hind foot!
Iditastupidthing is more like it!
