About Dog Mushing

 Dog mushing is the official Alaska state sport and malamutes (dogs most commonly used for mushing) are the official Alaska state dog. Dog mushing is an intense sport that requires long hours of training year round for both the musher (the person who rides on the sled) and the dogs. The sport involves harnessing up one or more dogs and then hooking them up to a sled where a musher stands or sits and runs the team for a distance. Mushing like many sports is practice both competitively and recreational and is enjoyed by people of all ages. Generally younger kids will run one or two dog teams, older kids will run five or six dog teams, and adults will run teams as big as sixteen dogs or more. There are also a few different ways that people race dogs. The first is long distance racing, this is where the musher and the dog team will run for very long stretches and often the race will last for days. An example of this kind of race is the well known Iditarod race in Alaska. The Iditarod is a race that goes from Anchorage to Nome and is over 1150 miles long. Sprint racing is the second type of dog racing. Sprint racing involves running the dogs for shorter stretches but running them much faster. Some of the more famous sprint races are the North American race in Fairbanks and the Fur Rondy in Anchorage, both held annually.

Some basic terminology for mushing

Hike: Gets the dogs moving

Gee: command to turn right

Haw: command to turn left

Easy: command to slow down

Musher: Person driving the sled dogs

Mushing: The act of driving the sled dogs

Lead Dog: The team leader, this dog steers the dog team and regulates the speed

Wheel dog: The dogs closest to the Sled

Sled: The wooden or metal rig that the dogs pull in the snow

Snowless rigs: also known as training carts, what the mushers use for training when there is no snow on the ground
sledbasicssledrigging

Both images from: http://www.expeditionsamoyeds.org/sledbasics.html