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Candlelight and Books=4-Peat for Mackey

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Candlelight and Books=4-Peat for Mackey

By Robert Forto, PhD

Four-time Iditarod Champion, Lance Mackey, will go down in history as the only musher (to date) to do the unprecedented, win the Iditarod four times in a row.

Mackey, 39, was born and raised in Alaska. The back-to-back-to-back-to-back Iditarod Champion and four-time Yukon Quest champion and current record holder says he began mushing “at birth.”

“I grew up around racing and the Iditarod. I was at the finish line in 1978 to see my father, Dick, win by one second. In 1993, my older brother, Rick, won. Both my father and brother won wearing bib #13 in their sixth Iditarod.” says Mackey.

Mackey’s finish today was like no other in history. Not only did he win the ‘Last Great Race’ for the fourth time in a row, he did it in typical Mackey style with little to no-rest and blowing past the competitors, King, Anderson, Baker, Neff, and 2010 Yukon Quest champion, Hans Gatt. In an interview this year on the website http://www.mushing.tv Mackey explains how he prepares for racing the Iditarod with little to no sleep at all. He explains that he starts off by turning out all the lights and turning the heat on full blast and reads by candlelight. He increases the time each day until he has no problem staying up for extended periods of time.

The winner of this year’s Iditarod wins $50,400.00 and a new dodge truck. Does Mackey really need another truck? He has won the prize the last four years in a row! I think last year he claimed a new car for his wife Tonya. He does have three children: Amanda, Britney and Cain, all of driving age. Maybe they can start a Mackey convoy!

Citation: The Official Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Guide 2010.

Tags: Lance Mackey | Iditarod | Team Ineka | Dog Training Denver | Dog Doctor Radio | Denver Dog Works | Mushing Radio | Duluth Dog Works

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Dr. Robert Forto is a musher training for his first Iditarod in 2013 mushing under the Team Ineka banner. Dr. Forto hosts a radio show, Mush! You Huskies that can be heard at http://www.mushingradio.com. Dr. Forto can be reached through his website at https://teamineka.com

Iditarod Musher: Hugh Neff

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Iditarod Musher Hugh Neff

By Robert Forto, PhD

On my recent trip to Anchorage I had the pleasure of spending time with 6-time Iditarod musher, Hugh Neff. Hugh and I have developed a friendship over the past year since I invited him to come to Denver and speak to my daughter’s school about the Iditarod, mushing and living in the North.

Hugh and I spoke at length about my desire to run the Iditarod in 21013 and what it will take to get to that goal. I had the pleasure of handling for him at the ceremonial start in Anchorage and helped send him and his team off to Nome. What a great honor.

Hugh Neff is not your ordinary musher. He spends a lot of his time speaking to kids all over North America and stresses the importance of education and family values. In this year’s Iditarod, Hugh is doing something special: he is taking part in the National Education Association-Alaska’s first statewide Read Across Alaska celebration. Hugh is helping promote and celebrate the fun of reading. Hugh is carrying the Cat in the Hat book across Alaska in his sled bag. Once Hugh has crossed the finish line in Nome, he will deliver the book to the children of this small village at the edge of the Earth.

Hugh Neff, 42 was born in Tennessee. He gr up in Illinois and attended Loyola Academy and the University of Illinois. He says he moved to Alaska in 1995 to “run down a dream”. Hugh says, “racing is an excuse to play with our beloved beasts all over the North.

Hugh lists his occupation as dog musher and public speaker. He is a member of Mush with P.R.I.D.E and is an Eagle Scout and says he enjoys “making other people smile.”

If you would like to find our more about Iditarod musher Hugh Neff please visit his website Laughing Eyes Kennel at http://www.laughingeyeskennel.com and follow his race across alaska this year on http://www.adn.com Hugh is wearing bib number 56.

Citation: The Official Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Guide

Tags: Hugh Neff | Iditarod | Team Ineka | Dog Training Denver | Dog Doctor Radio | Denver Dog Works

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Dr. Robert Forto is a professional musher training for his first Iditarod in 2013 racing under the Team Ineka banner. Dr. Robert Forto can be reached through his website at https://teamineka.com


Racing in the Lower 48

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Racing in The “Lower 48”

By Robert Forto, PhD


This week I will be heading to Alaska to cover the Iditarod start for my Internet Radio Show, Mush! You Huskies (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/dogworks) please listen in if you can.

Then in 1925 came the diphtheria serum run. It brought a lot more attention to the dogs resulting in a statue in Central Park, New York of one of the leaders, Balto. Leonhard Seppala claimed it was Togo who deserved the credit though. But at the time dog mushing had spread across North America, and very soon, there were races in New England and in the western states—California, Idaho, and in The Pas, Manitoba. But racing in Alaska was still a big time event.

In the 1920’s, the famous were Leonhard Seppala and a French Canadian named Emile St. Godard. They had different types of dogs. Seppala had the dogs that would later become known as Siberians, although they were not called Siberians at the time, but he was not concerned with registering them. St. Godard had a cross of the native husky type dogs and long-legged coursing dogs like greyhounds and stagehounds. The mushers would load their dogs into box car trains in The Pas and the mushers in New England would load their dogs and travel to The Pas, and they would all go to race in Ashton, Idaho in a race that was to become the Great American Dog Derby.

At this point dog mushing was on a roll. There was an exhibition sled dog race at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1932. There were major races with a lot of publicity throughout North America. Companies, or a company’s owner with a fair amount of money sponsored many of the teams of that day. A man from Chicago who would come up on vacation to The Pas area sponsored St. Godard. He used to tell St. Godard that he was in the meat packing business. Later on there were some people who claimed that he was actually in the Mafia, and describing his profession as a meat packer was one way of putting it.

Although mushing was popular, there were some in New England who felt there was just not enough activity. They thought it would be a lot simpler to award prizes to the dogs without having to race them, so they created two breeds, which they called the Siberian Husky and the Malamute. Rather than determining which dogs were the best because of their racing performance, they would just write down on a piece of paper a breed standard and award prizes because the dogs looked like they ought to be good. This was the foundation of the breed clubs for both dogs, and they continue to this day under the umbrella of the American Kennel Club.

There is at least one account of a breeder/musher named Eva “Short” Seeley who went through her kennel and picked out dogs and decided arbitrarily that this dog was going to be a Siberian Husky, and that dog is going to be a Malamute. Supposedly, some of the Siberians and Malamutes were in the same litter. Fortunately, in Alaska and other parts of the country where dogs were still being used for working, people did not pay any attention to that. Leonhard Seppala did not either for long. He went on for a while breeding white dogs, but then he decided on another type of dog. This had some consequences. In the next twenty years dog mushing did go into a decline. World War II had something to do with it. There were some uses for dogs during the war, but on a large scale, mushing activities in North America, even after the war ended.

Then the races were restarted in Alaska, along with some in New England. They were restarted in The Pas in the early fifties after a delay related to the war. It was a slow period in the sport, and the hope of its revival, because of national and international publicity in the 1920’s and 30’s and the participation in the Winter Olympics, did not happen.

In the early seventies there was a feeling among some people that the big event or the big part of the sport that needed to be saved in order for the sport to survive was open class mushing. During that time a lot of people were saying that they had to have a lot more participation in the open class; they have got to have more people involved so that they can have more open teams. Many people did not get involved because they were not ready to make the kind of commitment it takes to have thirty or forty dogs in their yard. There were a lot of obstacles in those days, and if a musher was not willing to make the commitment, their efforts would often be fruitless. It was those mushers who did make the commitment, who dedicated themselves to dog mushing, who gave up other professions to be dog mushers even through it was not very profitable, may have sustained or saved the sport.

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Dr. Robert Forto is a musher training for his first Iditarod in 2013. Dr. Forto can be reached through his website at https://teamineka.com

Dog Sledding Pre-History

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Dog Sledding Pre-History

By Dr. Robert Forto

My name is Dr. Robert Forto and I am the training director for Denver Dog Works and also a musher training for my first Iditarod running under the banner, Team Ineka.(https://teamineka.com) I wrote my doctorate dissertation on Human-Canine Communication in the Sport of Dog Sledding. This article is an excerpt from that.

Dog Sledding Pre-History

The art of dog driving started with early man.  The area in northern Asia known as Siberia, is the location of some of the most brutal weather conditions on the face of the planet.  The bone chilling temperatures produce almost frictionless snow and ice that covers everything for the majority of the year.

The next natural step from dogs pulling firewood along the beaches, or dragging home spoils from the hunt across the frozen, snow covered tundra, was to pulling toboggans and sleds.  From ancient bone runners dug up at Savoonga on Saint Lawrence Island, we know that the sled was used between four and five thousand years ago.  The dog sledding that these prehistoric people started became a crucial tool for the tribes of the north in the fight against Mother Nature for survival.

The Chukchi and Samoyed tribes of Siberia developed dog driving into an art over the centuries.  The Chukchi, according to experts, are the first people that depended seriously on the dogs in order to survive.  The Russian scholar, Dr. Robert Crane, wrote, “climatic changes and displacement of the Chukchi by a more powerful southern people combined to force the Chukchi to base their economy on sled dog transportation in order to survive.”

In the long winters of the northern region the sled dog’s contributions were the most prevalent.  Time and time again the Chukchi people suffered from the scarcity of

food that continually threatened their very survival.  This reality was the catalyst that drove the tribe to develop the sled dog.  With this development, the Chukchi had trumped the other arctic tribes who competed fiercely for the limited resources.  The native people of the north were able to extend their hunting ranges in direct correlation to the added mobility that their dogs enabled them to achieve by pulling sleds of supplies

The original canines that the Chukchi used were likely descended from the domesticated dogs of their competitors from the southern latitudes.  The dog of the north scarcely resembled its southern ancestors a few generations later.  They were larger, more rigorous, wolf–like and of course very furry.  Their thick outer coats were supplemented with a life sustaining undercoat that helped the canine to retain heat, and fight off the bitter cold of the arctic regions.

These early dogs did more than pull sleds; they were hunters, protectors and companions.  The sled dog was to become an important part of history, figuring predominantly in a plethora of history changing events.  Most assuredly, without the sled dog many things would be different.

Mushing Legends: Short Seeley

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Short Seeley and Wonalancet Farm

By Robert Forto

A large measure of the success of the Siberian Husky and the Alaskan Malamute as purebred sled and show dogs is given to a small sprightly woman known as “Short” Seeley. When Arthur Walden left New Hampshire to go with Admiral Byrd, he left his Chinook kennels in the more than capable hands of Milton and Eva Seeley.  The enthusiasm and complete professional dedication which the Seeley’s lavished on northern dogs influenced (and still does) the status of these dogs all over the world.

At Wonalancet Farm and kennels during the late 1920’s the Seeley’s established a school for dogs and dog drivers. The graduates of this school, both human and canine, have gone on Antarctic expeditions, served in the United States Armed Forces and made names for themselves on the sport racing trails. The kennel and training school at Wonalancet is the oldest privately run school in operation anywhere, and up until 1955, Short Seeley supplied dogs for the United States Navy’s Operation Deepfreeze in Antarctica.

The dogs favored by the Seeley’s were Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies. It was primarily through their efforts that a true-to-type Alaskan Malamute was recognized by the American Kennel Club in 1938. The Seeley’s organized the Alaskan Malamute Club of America and kept the New England Sled Dog Club in business after its first president went to Antarctica.  Mrs. Seeley herself was one of three women who raced the New England trails during the 1930’s. She was also the only woman to race sled dogs in the 1932 Olympics. Later in life, Mrs. Seeley had minimal involvement in the operation of her kennel while she was traveling all over the country as a judge for the American Kennel Club, working on books about her life and her dogs.

Mrs. Seeley, as the operator of Chinook Kennels for over fifty years, had seen over two thousand dogs enter her gates. The accomplishments of these dogs and the achievements of the kennels have been nationally recognized. Admiral Byrd visited in the early thirties, and a plaque was dedicated to all the sled dogs that served on the Byrd Expedition. In 1971, Senator Norris Colton, of New Hampshire, read a tribute to Short Seeley into the congressional record citing in particular her excellent contributions to the world of northern dogs. Mrs. Seeley was also honored by election to the Dog Mushers’ Hall of Fame. At the time of her election, she was one of only two women to be so distinguished.

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Dr. Robert Forto is a professional musher and races under the Team Ineka banner. Dr. Forto can be reached th

If You’re Not the Lead Dog the View Never Changes

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If You’re Not the Lead Dog the View Never Changes

By Robert Forto, PhD

On the next edition of The Dog Doctor Radio Show http://tinyurl.com/dogdoc , Dr. Robert Forto will welcome motivational speaker, corporate trainer and the author of the book Iditarod Leadership,Unleashing the Power of the Team, Chris Fuller.

Fuller the CEO of Texas based, Influence Leadership has developed a cutting edge corporate leadership program based on the allegory of the Iditarod that was born during a corporate training development project for John Maxwell’s 360 Degree Leader principles. “I was looking for an illustration to bring the concept to life and the old saying ‘if you’re not the lead dog the view never changes’, a quote that I have used for many years in building sales organizations,” says Fuller.

In Fuller’s corporate training program he develops people in the team concept often used in the Iditarod dog sled race. The concept is refined by placing these team members in a strategic position it provides the opportunity for them to contribute to the team, not just become the rank and file. “As I looked a littler further, I realized that it was a perfect illustration for how to view leadership,” said Fuller.

While Fuller is not a musher, he is in heart. He grew up in Texas where they don’t get much snow and as he was building out the concept for his book and subsequent training program he wanted to make sure it was authentic. He flew to Nome during the 2008 Iditarod sled dog race and spent the week with three time Iditarod competitor, Nils Hahn learning to mush and loved it.

In Fuller’s leadership training program he teaches practical, straightforward principles all over the world. His accompanying book is a quick read and is designed to pique the interest of his readers and draw them into this unique concept of corporate and business training. “People, learn through stories,” says Fuller.

In his book and in his training system he tells these stories first and then research proves up the story. Just one example is how to apply the positions on a dog team; leader, wheel, swing, and point and use those positions to harness the power of any organization or business.

Fuller’s next training conference will be held in Anchorage, AK on March 4, 2010 at the Millennium Hotel from 9 am to 4 pm. If you would like to sign up for the conference, buy his book or find out more information please visit Fuller’s web site at http://www.influenceleadership.com