Dog Sledding - From Need to Passion

• By the "unexpected storm", Gary Paulsen - running dogs for almost a year
• Took two years to get to professional level.
• Started to Colorado, family headed north - find cheap place to live - settled in shack of northern woods of Minnesota.
• Didn't have transportation until given him four dogs and broken sled - relied on for hunting/getting firewood, etc.
• Spent a lot of time with dogs - got interested - the group work/ways/system of animals
• Talked to ex-cowboy from Montana - said that his cows - when needed to go to river to get water, one cow stayed behind cowboy automatically babysit calves, different cow each time - work out a system.
• One day - Paulsen ran dogs across frozen terrain/river, saw a beaver bobbing along on frozen river.
• Dogs race after it, Paulsen try to stop them - beavers can fight fierce - strong bite.
• Couldn't stop dogs, wanted to shoot beaver before fight starts.
• Dogs got there, just sat and stared at beaver while beaver bared teeth and hissed.
• Dogs observed, beaver gave an evil look and bobbed away.
• Stopped at Norway pines to camp - made fire, dogs made their own grass/dirt bed.
• Woke at night - check on dogs - had 9 dogs instead of 8, saw one was a coyote - made friends with his dogs.
• Coyote - female with lame foot - Paulsen felt sorry for her, fed her meat.
• Followed them everywhere, for couple months, did everything dogs did, mated with a sled dog - Typhoon.
• One run - turned other direction and departed.
• Paulsen stayed in that area - in case she had troubles with hunter - sad when she left.