Anja Radano at her Swamp Dawg Kennels lot. Photo by Phillip Manning – KTNA. - Talkeetna, Alaska 
Anja Radano prepares for her first Iditarod
For most of her fourteen years in Alaska, Anja Radano has been involved in the mushing world. Her first experience with sled dogs was helping musher Melanie Gould with one of her Iditarod runs. After working with the dogs, Anja says she quickly developed an addiction to the sport and the animals themselves.
“You get to places you would never have a chance to get to otherwise, and you experience things that nobody else, unless you do that, can…They’re my family; they’re my friends.”
Originally from Southern Germany, Anja and her husband, Pete, live near a lake in Talkeetna. The ground can get pretty swampy in the summer, hence Anja’s kennel moniker, “Swamp Dawg.”
Maintaining a sled dog team means a lot of work and a lot of money. Anja Radano isn’t sureexactly how much she will have spent on her team and gear once the Iditarod starts, but she says $25,000 is not an outlandish guess. Anja says there are a number of factors that add to the cost of having an Iditarod team.
“Just maintaining a team through the year, because you have to feed them 365 days a year, not just for the the Iditiarod, and then training. Lately, since the conditions here are not really great, we’ve been traveling up to the Denali Highway a lot, so you have to put in gas.”
Anja works as a vet tech, and has volunteered on multiple Iditarods in her time in Alaska. In all that time, though, she says she has never been to Nome, the endpoint of the race.
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