Spirit of a Racer in a Dog’s Blood

MASSENA, N.Y. — Like any athlete, Winnie has a race-day routine. Four hours before the beginning of her sled-dog race in this upstate town, Winnie, a Siberian husky, laps up meat broth. Two hours before, she submits to pats from spectators. Forty minutes before, she settles into the snow for a final rest.

But her co-owner Diane Baskin-Wright said not to be fooled. “She morphs into psycho dog when she hits the line,” Baskin-Wright said.

There were about 200 sled dogs here on a recent Saturday, barking and howling alongside vehicles with license plates like Sib Box, Mushers, Haw Gee and Ondasly. Winnie stood out not just for her calm race-day nerves — she is the lead dog on her team — and the spray of gray along her back. Unusual for a racing dog, Winnie is also a show dog, the top-ranked female Siberian in the nation. Her show name is Huskavarna’s Destined to Win. She will appear at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show beginning Monday, competing alongside breeds that sat at pharaohs’ feet or hunted with Hungarian kings.

Winnie’s breed does not have royal roots, but her lineage is fierce. It dates to what some consider the finest feat in dog-and-human history, a 1925 race to deliver lifesaving diphtheria serum to icebound Nome, Alaska. The event gripped the nation and later became an inspiration for the Iditarod race.

But after the headlines ceased, what happened to two of the lead dogs — Winnie’s forebear Togo and Balto, whose statue stands in Central Park — is a tale that reflects Americans’ quick creation and destruction of celebrities, involving Hollywood, a 10-cent circus, a Cleveland zoo, a ruined friendship and a sports controversy that, almost 90 years later, still raises the hackles of sled-dog drivers everywhere.

“It’s still very much in the mind of mushers,” said Bob Thomas, a Siberian musher and a historian for the International Siberian Husky Club.