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Mush is just the start of it

By Jim Moodie

dogsled teamDave Bishop, head musher at the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve, near Haliburton, Ont., is exercising the patience of a pope. Two off-duty dogs have gone temporarily AWOL; another pair has decided to get really “hitched up” while awaiting their turn on the trail. Those that aren’t missing in action or making love in the traces are making an unholy racket, yipping and howling and leaping against their lines like mad marionettes.

Bishop, 42, is used to such canine chaos. He’s helmed the dogsledding program at the wilderness facility since its infancy in 2000, taking a self-guided crash course in mushing at that time and honing his abilities since. The program now includes more than 100 dogs, most Siberian huskies, and a clientele of 500-plus cottagers and other visitors per winter, who come out for a day of driving dogs on a network of trails totalling 70 km. But its success isn’t really measured in numbers or distance. “It’s about creating an experience that people will not soon forget,” Bishop says. “When you have four or six dogs pulling in unison across a frozen lake, the serenity of the whole experience is just incredible.”

This isn’t to say that dogsledding is a cinch, or always idyllic. Dogs stop to relieve themselves, get tangled up, or charge off course when a grouse crosses their path. “It’s not like driving a machine,” says Bishop. But few dogs balk at the assignment to pull. “It’s bred into them, and they just inherently know to run.” Nonetheless, novice dogs are paired with more experienced pullers until they feel comfortable within the team. Conditioning begins in early November – the thick-coated critters can’t train until it’s cool – with dogs hitched to a “cart,” an ATV without an engine. By the time there’s enough snow on the ground for the sleds, they’re fit for half-day tours of 20 km or full-day 40-k’ers. Intro-ductory trips are somewhat shorter, but even novice mushers get the chance to steer their own sled. “Or they can double up with a partner, so there’s one in the basket and one driving, and switch around,” Bishop notes. Guides travel at the front and rear of the “train” with their own teams, and stay in touch via radios if the string of sleds gets too spread out, or one happens to get bogged down in snow. “Dogsled-ding is a very physical activity,” says Bishop. “You have to control the team.” That said, he reassures, “if you can walk up a hill, you should be perfectly fine.”

Lucy McInnes, a Kennisis Lake cottager and repeat customer of Bishop’s, says “you can make dogsledding as challenging as you want.” She and husband Kim get a good workout on some of the more technical sections of trail while their two young children ride in the basket, murmuring encouragement to the canines. The dogs themselves are mostly silent once they get the green light to pull. As soon as the musher gives the signal, the cacophony abruptly ceases, and all you can hear is the soft swish of runners on snow. 

 

Photo courtesy of Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. 

 

Published in the Winter 2006 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Copyright © 2006 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.