Driving a pack of dogs across icy tundra, racing past jagged mountains and over frozen rivers is something that most Cambridge natives just don't do, but Susan Howlett Butcher has done all three and won the grueling 1100-plus-mile Iditarod race between Nome and Anchorage in the bargain.
Butcher, who now lives in Alaska, is the only woman to win the race and the first person to do so two times in a row. Back in Boston last week, Butcher spoke about her experiences on the dogsled and her life in Alaska.
Although Butcher set a record this year for the race, winning it in 11 days and beating her own time last year, her next goal is to complete the race in 10 days, she said in an interview last week sponsored by her outfitter Allied Fibers. She was two hours from this record this year.
When the race started in 1977, celebrating the men and dogs who brought life-saving anti-toxin from Anchorage to dipheria-stricken Nome Alaska in 1925, the winner took 21 days to finish. "Everybody says, 'It will never be done in 10 days.' I have shaved off 31 hours [from the previous record]. I think I can shave off two more," Butcher says.
The fact that she is a woman has not disadvantaged her in the slightest, Butcher says. "Women are equally good in their stamina, and in the training of animals. You don't have to be the physically strongest or physically fastest, so you do very well," she says.
Equally important for dog-racing success, says the 32-year-old Butcher, is a love of animals. "I loved animals. That was part of where my hate for society--which is what I called it then [when she was a child]--came from," Butcher says.
And a hate, or at lest distaste, for the more comfortable things in life can never hurt while you are running an 11-days race in the freezing cold. "You can't think that you could be in a nice, warm bathtub," Butcher advises.
Or in a nice bed for that matter. Butcher slept only 22 hours during the 11 days of this year's race. However, she allowed her dogs to rest every four hours. "If you sleep too long, you've lost the race," Butcher says. "But dogs need a lot of sleep."
If anyone should know that, Butcher should. "That's now I learned about life, was from my dogs," she says. She has spent most of her life with dogs, getting her first one when she was four, and her first Siberian Huskie when she was 15. She had a special pass to bring her dog to school, the Wharehouse Cooperative School in Roxbury.
"A lot the time I couldn't go do what other kids could do, but I had a real sense of responsibility. It's never been a burden," Butcher says.
At 16, she moved to Maine to live in a more rural environment with relatives. "I had two dogs and my mother didn't want them in the house," she says.
Butcher studied to be a veterinary technician in Denver, after which she moved to Alaska, homesteaded in the Wrangell Mountains, and started to raise and train sled dogs. She and her husband David L. Monson now own a kennel of 150 dogs in their Alaskan home. They live in a log cabin, 12 x 16 feet, without running water. Butcher melts ice in the winter, draws water from a nearby stream in the summer, and generates a limited supply of electricity. The closest neighbor is more than six miles away, mail is 25 miles away, and Fairbanks--the nearest town--145 miles southeast.
And 365 days a year, 12 to 15 hours a day, she trains her dogs. Butcher and Monson race five to 10 teams a day, building up the dogs' endurance like marathon runners until they can run 26-30 miles. "Then I can go anywhere with them," she says. "This is our basketball team, we have to pick our players, then we have to condition them physically...there is little for anything else."
Everyone in her neighborhood is also "mushes," the slang word for dog racing. "I know all the names of the dogs in the neighborhood. It's the only real topic of conversation," Butcher says.
While Butcher says she recognizes about 1000 sled dogs across Alaska by sight, she confesses, "I don't remember anybody's names." It's like having acquaintances, she says. "Then I have best friends and I have my relatives."
For "a good mid-winter game" Butcher and Monson name their dog pups, she says. Often they name the dogs according to themes: Cracker's pups are called Ritz and Graham, and Gingerbread's pups have spice names. "Then we'll do books--shogun..." Butcher muses.
"Mushers care about dogs as people care about kids," Butcher says. But she does not think that dogs will interfere with having a family. "I could train six to eight hours, come in to nurse, bop out on an eight mile run. I've thought this out very carefully," she explains.
While dog sleds are Butcher's sole from of transportation as she refuses to use snow machines "mass transport" in Alaska, she could not do without her dogs. "When your snow machine breaks down, you can't curl up with it," Butcher says.
Her husband realizes this. Monson laughs as he tells a story about a time when he and Granite, the lead dog, had gotten into an accident and Butcher's first reaction was to ask how the dog was.
"Granite, he's my main guy," says Butcher with half-seriousness. "He's my sweetie. Everybody knows that David comes second to Granite."
