And the Iditarod needs volunteer pilots as much as they need veterinarians. Every year, at least thirty pilots step up to join the Iditarod Air Force, otherwise known as the IAF. They’re the ones hauling supplies and volunteers into the twenty-six—give or take, depending on the year—checkpoints, most of those locations only accessible by air. They also fly media around and take the dogs dropped along the trail back to Anchorage.
Jonah may be volunteering, but there is long-term opportunity, which is how I hooked him. Fans and tourists come from all over the world, eager to witness the race. They pay pilots a lot of money to fly them around, and as a flight charter company owner always looking for business, it’s an opportunity for Jonah to get involved, make himself known.
“Yeah, yeah.” Jonah grins sheepishly. “It’s been a few years, though. I forgot how much work it is.” He stretches his left arm out in front of him. “I’ve been hauling fifty-pound drop bags for two weeks.”
“Is it bothering you?” He shattered that arm in a plane crash last summer, the second time Jonah went down in two years. That was one of the scariest nights of my life, waiting for a phone call from the rescue team, fearing we’d lost him for good.
“Nah. Just whining for the sake of it. Did you go down to Anchorage to watch the big dog-and-pony show?”
“Don’t you mean the dog-and-reindeer show?” The weekend before the Iditarod is always a big one, with a ceremonial start for the teams in downtown Anchorage before the mushers and their dogs are shuttled up to the official race start in Willow. The days are filled with media interviews and spectators cheering for their favorites as they set off along the eleven-mile urban stretch. It’s such an important event for the sport, the city, and the entire state that they’ll do anything to make sure it happens. One March, due to an especially mild winter, organizers hauled in a train’s worth of snow from Fairbanks to build up the track so the teams had something to slide across.
The ceremonial start is capped off with a herd of domestic reindeer running down the streets.
I shake my head. “Too busy. Prerace checks and all that.” The last step in a month-long process ahead of the Iditarod, where mushers are required to prove their dogs are fit to race, undergoing a battery of tests, deworming treatments, and veterinarian approvals. “Plus, I didn’t want to see Skip’s smug face as he waved at his adoring fans.” One of whom I suspect left a scathing review of my clinic online. I don’t have anyone named Shanna on my client roster, and her accusations about the service were vague. They seemed a personal attack on me, even going so far as to mention the Iditarod in her comments.
Jonah’s heavy brow furrows. “Is that guy still giving you problems?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“You want me to pick him up on the trail and drop him off somewhere where no one will ever find him? ’Cause I’ll do it. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the dogs get home safe.”
I laugh. The IAF has been known to answer distress calls from mushers who scratch along the trail—they may get disoriented in a whiteout, or injured, or decide they can’t go on any farther—and need a ride back to safety. While Jonah’s all talk on leaving a man to die in the Alaskan tundra, knowing him, he will make Skip’s life hell if their paths should cross.
“Let me get back to you on that, but I think Skip’ll stay away from me this year.” If anything, I should be more worried about a run-in with the Iditarod’s shiny rookie, whom I’ve heard more than a few excited whispers about.
True to his word, Howie stopped in at Frank Hartley’s the week after our confrontation and confirmed that Tyler had brought Nymeria to the clinic for treatment. The bill was enormous, and Tyler covered it all without complaint. And because Howie is Howie, he followed up again a month later, and Frank confirmed that she’s spayed, has put on almost ten pounds, and looks like a whole different dog.
Tyler hasn’t even run the race yet, and his name is already casting a warm glow on spectators and the community alike. Even Wade made mention during a casual chat with my father that Tyler’s dogs are some of the fittest they’ve ever seen, and he wouldn’t be shocked if he placed high. And apparently, there’re whisperings about the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award, handed out by the veterinarian team to the musher who demonstrates exemplary dog care during the race, based on the little of Tyler and his team that people witnessed this weekend.