As someone who was deeply traumatized by the movie Eight Below, (and before that Where the Red Fern Grows) I approach any media that features dogs with suspicion. So let me assure you: all the dogs in this come out the other side okay.
I picked this book up because I have quite enjoyed Blair Braverman’s appearances on the You’re Wrong About podcast, and I knew she had written books (I read her fiction debut [Small Game] a few years ago), but I had forgotten she had written a book specifically about dog mushing. Then she was on a You’re Wrong About episode about Balto, the book got mentioned, and well, here we are!
The inside flap for Dogs on the Trail describes the book as “A delightful photographic journey into a year in the life of a team of sled dogs”. And that is true, except I’d swap out a delightful photographic journey for a stunningly gorgeous informative photographic journey. Yes, a picture might be worth a thousand words (and for real these pictures are gorgeous) but the words in this book are also great. For example, I had an idea of what a “husky” was in my head all these years only to find out I was thinking of Siberian Huskies and that “husky” means a northern-bred dog with an instinct to pull. They don’t all look like the breed that I was picturing in my head.
The layout is amazing, you have beautiful photographic spreads with text laid out informatively around them, and to my extreme delight, you get profiles of the sled dogs along with full-page pictures. Yes, I am a dog person. The writing is great, if a little sparse, and in the end, yes the pictures are truly what totally sold me on this book, along with the profiles of the dogs. Really, I’d read a whole book of profiles of sled dogs.
The book is what it sells itself as, a year in the life, starting in the autumn and going until the spring which brings – puppies! It’s not a How-To on mushing, but it gives you insight into how the dogs train, what they eat (so much food …), and what their lives are like outside of pulling an object. It also touches on what happens when the dogs retire (only good things for the dogs that make up Blair and Quince’s pack). I learned a surprising amount, and am feeling that itch to read more about dog sledding in general and the Iditarod in specific.
Closing with a quote from the beginning of the book:
“…I do want to live like sled dogs. I want to travel through life with a team that has my back. I want to explore new places, but get just as excited about familiar ones. I want to find comfort in routine and opportunity in change.”
Yeah, me too. Me too.