"fearful creatures prone to fearless decisions"

was this post simply an excuse to share lots of cute dog pictures? perhaps.

Dogs have always been in my life. 

My first word was "doggy". I used to always get holes in the knees of my pants from crawling around pretending to be a dog or some other kind of animal. I played in dog kennels regularly.

As long as I've had social media, I've followed many dog accounts. I've followed a Bernese Mountain Dog named Waffle on Instagram for 4 years now, and it's an account I still check on every day. I started an Instagram for my dog (follow her, she’s adorable) so that I could follow more dog accounts. I still have Snapchat only because I follow a family that has 5 golden retrievers and I love them all like they are my own dogs. 

So it's safe to say that the same goes for Twitter: the Twitter accounts WeRateDogs, DogFeelings, and I'vePetThatDog make my day every single day. Somehow, I discovered a writer named Blair Braverman. Blair is a musher who lives in the northwoods of Wisconsin with her husband, Quince, 25 Alaskan huskies, and a few cats. She learned about dogsledding at a Norwegian Folk School, had worked on a glacier as a dogsled guide, and had been a musher for 12 years now. I was immediately hooked, because, ya know, dogs.

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, so I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled upon Blair Braverman's account, but I do remember the very first story of hers I read. 

This was a story about Hari, the blind sled dog. Hari was from a litter of pups named after types of beans (Haricot, Refried, Fava, Garbanzo). 

Hari had always loved being a sled dog, but as he got older his blindness affected him a little more. He had hurt his foot recently while running, and now had a periodic fear that "The Ground Was Sharp". It came up while Blair was running the Gunflint Mail Run in early 2018. He refused to move, but Blair didn't necessarily want to let him ride in the sled, because she didn't want to let him give in to that fear when it wasn't necessary. If she did, she felt it would reinforce that it was okay to give in to that fear, and could affect his confidence in his ability to run. 

So she had an idea. She put Hari between two other dogs, so that they were running three across.

Normally dogs run two-by-two or alone along the gangline, but this adjustment did the trick. Hari ran the rest of the race with no problem. To quote Blair: “It was like magic”.  

Blair's storytelling skills are incredible. She has 25 dogs who she shares about on social media regularly. She speaks frankly about the difficult aspects of the sport, as well as the triumphs they experience. I began following along and waiting anxiously for her tweets every day. A particularly moving story about one of Blair’s worst days as a musher can be found in an easily accessible format here. I wish I could pick a favorite, but I love them all so much. But a particularly great story about Grinch, the dysfunctional sled dog pictured below, can be found here.

Blair also writes for Outside Magazine, mainly in a column about dating advice called Tough Love. I stumbled upon one of her columns about why it is important to get outside when depressed and how to do it. Blair struggled with this after having Lyme's Disease and the resulting exhaustion. The way she talked about mental health and the outdoors with such empathy and kindness and toughness made me want to be more like her.

I discovered this column at a crucial time in my life. Last spring I went through a major depressive episode. I had a hard time doing anything besides going to work for weeks. This led to me having to drop out of several of my classes when I was supposed to graduate. I was despondent about the state of the world, about my personal growth, and that I felt like my brain was broken. There were so few things that made me happy. But reading Blair’s tweets reminded me that I could be the person that I knew I was. Her adventures continue to inspire me to take my own. 

Recently, Blair competed in the Iditarod. For her fans, affectionately called the #UglyDogs (an online troll once told Blair “Go back to your ugly dogs, Karen”), it was two weeks of simultaneous anxiousness and joy. I think there was only one night during the Iditarod where I actually slept for more than a couple hours straight. I was constantly checking the GPS tracker, checking Twitter, and checking the Iditarod website for any information about where Blair was or how she was doing. (I have close to a hundred of these GPS tracker screenshots on my phone).

There was a period of 20 hours when Blair was stuck in a shelter cabin waiting out a storm. During this time, her online fans were consumed with worry, with brief bouts of trying to downplay all of the possible worst-case scenarios that could have been happening. This spurred on the spontaneous creation of the Igivearod. Fans of Blair, and mushing in general, raised over $100,000 for Alaskan schools primarily via DonorsChoose. As many of the donations as possible were tracked in a Google Sheet spreadsheet. It was an incredible outpouring of support and generosity in the face of something fear-inducing. The #UgyDogs are incredible people. It is one of the best corners on the Internet, which Blair and her husband Quince have created.

Oh, and Blair finished the Iditarod! It took her 13 days, 19 hours, and 17 minutes. She finished 36th out of 39 finishers (52 teams started the race, 13 teams scratched). Blair kept an audio diary on the trail, and NPR played parts of it recently on All Things Considered. Warning, it’s an emotional rollercoaster.

I am still so proud of her for this tremendous accomplishment.

Blair and others I have now met through the online mushing community have reminded me of why it is so important to live the life you want to live while you’re here, because there is not a promise of tomorrow. This could be optimistic or pessimistic, depending on how you look at it, but that sentiment is so in line with how I have been feeling over the past year. The wanting to do life my own way. To finding my purpose through things I enjoy.

One of my favorite quotes is one that Blair has used to explain her similarity to her dog Jenga (pictured below) is that they are both “fearful creatures prone to fearless decisions”. I feel like Blair, Jenga, and I are all pretty similar.

This collective feeling of wanting to do what I want to do, along with my yearlong interest in mushing is what led me to sign up to volunteer at a race here in Montana called Race to the Sky: a weekend which changed me completely.

Until next time, happy trails.

Rosie

p.s. In the meantime, please read Blair’s book! I read it while traveling in the Pacific Northwest last spring, and it is excellent. Find it here or at your local bookstore.