Cosmic Canines Racing

I don’t know how exactly all of this started, but one night we were all sitting around talking about running races. We had an entry form for a race called, “Only Fools Run at Night.” It is a 5K (3.1 miles) race run around downtown Juneau at Midnight. They have a centipede category where racers can run as a team but they must be tied together in someway. Competitors are encouraged to dress up in costumes. So somehow running the race morphed into running the race as a centipede, which led to the idea of everyone dressing up as a dog and puling one of the carts around the course.
For the most part, nobody in camp ran regularly, so this would take some training on the part of the camp. We have a dry erase board in our kitchen which lists our dish duties (we all take turns doing the dishes) and things we need from town. Added to the list was a “running list.” everyday someone ran they would get a star next to their name, except Jonathon the cook, who got a Star of David next his name because he is Jewish.
The whole camp really got pumped and everyone really tried to get in shape for the race. I was really proud of our motivation and team spirit. We kind of wanted to do this to show up the glacier mushers, because they always giving us a hard time about how easy we have it and how we are in some way lesser for it. So everything was kept top secret. Everyone got involved except Dustin and Amanda, which actually worked out in the long run because then we had someone to take pictures of us. Kym, was designated the musher. Cosmos would dress up like a human with a shirt and a pair of shorts on. And Lily would ride in a baby seat in the cart.
The week before the rave we all made our costumes. We made ears and tails out of fake fur. Some of us had floppy ears, some pointy. Everyone was a little different just like the dogs. We had to make harnesses and go for test runs. We recruited Danny who is a “floater” between all of the AIE camps and Jacques Phillip, who is from the Skagway Glacier, but super cool , an athlete, and coincidently in Juneau the day of the race. Jacques is somewhat a famous musher and I thought it was funny that the first I met him he is sitting in our kitchen wearing a set of floppy ears.
Everyone added their own special touches to their costumes. For example I wore a dog collar and made a dog tag that was labeled, “Astro.”
A few hours before we decided on our line up, Imagine if it were really like that, with the dogs debating on who should be where. “Doggy” jokes were being thrown around like, “Don’t put Nicole next to Jonathon, she is in heat.” and, “ I think Danny is a fighter you might what to careful who you put him next to.”
The line up is as follows:
Lead: Matt Hayashida and Danny
Swing: Sarah and Sean
Team: Jacques and Caelynn
Team: Forrest
Team: Jonathon and Nicole
Wheel: Me and Matt, my handler, team Cosmic pulling the heavy load!
We drove into town and went to the start. We were quite the hit. Everyone is looking at us wondering if we were actually going to pull this 1 ton cart around down town Juneau. Of course we were jumping and bucking like a dog team. Barking and howling and really hamming it up. There were some other cool costumes there also, like the US, with 50 people each representing a state all tied together, complete with a fence running next to it labeled “Homeland Security.”
Cosmos really added to the whole thing, standing with his front paws and the bar, like a musher would and baking the whole way, like he was yelling commands to us.
The first part of the race was pretty flat but then started the hills. I have new respect for wheel dogs. It was a lot of work on Matt and I getting up that hill. Then there were the other 4 hills we would have to climb. Also we would have to pull the cart wide around the corners.
Of course what goes up also has to go down. Coming down those hills was very stressful in wheel. Especially when the driver has the nickname “drunk driver” because once she crashed the whole cart full of tourists into the embankment. When this happened my tourists were watching asked me, “Is that driver drunk?” Not to mention that the brakes frequently need work. Needless to say I was always looking over my shoulder when we were heading down hill.
I had also mad a soundtrack which we were blasting from a boom box on the cart. The mix included songs like, “The Theme from Rocky“, “Chariots of Fire“, “Who let the Dogs Out“, and “Giving the Dog a Bone“
People were so impressed with the whole thing. Not only was it cool but we were actually passing people on the way. We crossed the finish line with “Chariots of Fire” blasting and a pretty respectable time. Everyone was amped! What an awesome time.
So now we not only have perspective of a dog’s life, but we also have a new camp bond. A sense of team instead of individual.