The dogs are ready to run.
“These dogs love it,” said Canzada Maruskie, dog musher. “If they couldn’t run they wouldn’t have anything to do at that point, they love what they are doing.”
So do their owners.
The Maruskie family traveled over 3,600 kilometres from Alaska to be at the South Slave Arctic Winter Games.
They’ve also been doing it for a while and picked up a few things along the way.
“We don’t feed them the morning before the race, pretty much the only thing that we do differently,” said Zachary Maruskie. “Some mushers probably do that too. It’s just so they don’t poop on the trail.”
However, some issues came up they couldn’t account for.
A minimum of four teams are needed for dog sledding at the games, according to the official rules.
In 2016, host Greendland didn’t offer the sport.
But it appears the games are making an exception this year with only two teams entered.
“We are already prepared, we already paid, we got sponsors, we got all this stuff to do, you can’t just cancel it at the last minute,” said Scott Maruskie.
