Nigel, sled dog

Out of Iditarod, Yoshida reunited with her missing sled dog, Nigel

By Ryan Bakken, Grand Forks Herald

March 13 2009

Nancy Yoshida’s lost dog, Nigel, has been reunited with the musher and her team. Nigel, one of the 16 sled dogs in Nancy Yoshida’s team at the Iditarod, was rescued Friday afternoon after running loose in the wild for more than three days.

Like Lassie, Nigel has come home.

Nigel, one of the 16 sled dogs in Nancy Yoshida’s team at the Iditarod, was rescued Friday afternoon after running loose in the wild for more than three days.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am,” Yoshida said. “It’s such a huge relief.

“Not getting him back would have been my worst nightmare. I would have been devastated to lose an amazing animal like that.”

Yoshida praised the “Iditarod family” for his recapture. The male Alaskan Husky was spotted by a three-person search party on snowmobiles. Chris, Sara and Miranda Poynter, owners of a nearby lodge, were able to coax Nigel to them.

“It was the female voices of Sara and Miranda that did it,” Yoshida said. “The guys who tried to get him earlier scared him away.”

They radioed Yoshida, who then hopped on a Piper Cub airplane to the site from Willow, Alaska, where the race started. The plane landed, and Yoshida and dog soon shared a happy reunion.

“Nigel was absolutely thrilled to see me,” she said. “I said his name, and he came right up to me and gave me a kiss.”

The dog ran away early Tuesday after being unhooked from the sled as Yoshida went down a gorge.

While heartened by his return, the 58-year-old musher from Thompson, N.D., felt bad for her other 15 dogs.

“All that time and energy and training these dogs have gone through, and they don’t get to go to Nome,” she said, choking up. “Look what they’ve gone through to run that race.”

She could have been talking about herself. She has undergone rigorous training for several years with the Iditarod in mind. She and her dogs moved their training to Alaska in late October.

But she broke one of her sled’s two runners, resulting in a crash as she was traveling down a gorge. She was stuck there on the trail for almost 24 hours before, with the help of other mushers, she was able to get her dogs and sled organized to go down the steep slope and negotiate the final eight miles to the next checkpoint.

“If I don’t get to try this again, at least I’ll be just one of a handful of people who have ridden eight miles on one runner,” she said.

Mushers aren’t allowed to continue if a dog is lost. Even if Nigel had returned earlier, she wouldn’t have been able to continue because low cloud cover prevented a replacement sled from being flown to the checkpoint. She withdrew late Tuesday after going 136 of the 1,151 miles.

Heavy snows and warm temperatures made for a difficult trail. “The snow is so soft, so wet and so deep that you get huge ruts in the trail,” she said. “You fall into a rut, and it rolls you, like what happened to me doing down the slope.

“I’m so disappointed. The dogs were doing great, and we were right on schedule.” With Nigel safe, Yoshida will fly into Nome to witness the finish. She remains uncertain if she will give the Iditarod a second try.

“I would love to try it again, but it’s so expensive,” she said. “I’d love to try it where everything could hang together.”

Source: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/110529