Matt Reymann pets Chuck, Alaskan Husky, at Silver Sage Mushing in Ashton on Jan. 12. JOHN ROARK | jroark@postregister.com - Ashton, Idaho 
Dogsledding: Art in chaos
On a frozen Saturday, hoar frost clings to aspen trees, snow settles on the sagebrush, and dogs howl. Twenty-five sled dogs to be exact — singing, howling and running in dizzying circles.
“They each have their own personality,” Linda Janssen said. “You get to where you can tell their voices when they do a group singalong. You can tell who’s harmony, alto, we even have some sopranos.”
But Janssen doesn’t own these dogs for their musical abilities. They’re here to run.
On the high desert northwest of Ashton with views of the Tetons to the east, Henry’s Fork to the south and the Lost River Range to the west, Silver Sage Mushing offers dog sled tours to visitors from around the world. Janssen’s camp sits on 160 acres of pristine land in the same town that hosts America’s oldest dog sled race, the American Dog Derby started in 1917, 56 years before the first Iditarod. It’s also a perfect place to train.
The camp has several groomed loops that are four and six miles. Leaving from Janssen’s camp, the dogs bound and howl until they hit their pace. The sled’s runners sing a constant shhhh against the snow and the dogs become focused. Mushers tend to stay quiet when running dogs.
“If you talk all of the time they’ll just tune you out,” said Matt Reymann, a musher that runs tours with Janssen.
These 45- to 60-pound dogs are powerful. Reymann has seen racers pulled to the ground and dragged by dogs when trying to hook them to the sled lines. A 4-mile run for a team of 10 dogs, mostly Alaskan huskies — and a few Siberian huskies, with nearly 400 pounds on a sled is a warm-up.
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