Sled Dog

WEST ROCKHILL, Pa. - Thousands of miles from Alaska, in Bucks County, Pa., where the landscape is blanketed with colorful leaves, not several feet of snow, Rob Downey trains some of his 50 sled dogs. A champion sledder and president of the 1,000-member U.S. Sled Dog Sports Federation, the sport's governing body, he is as dedicated to the sport as are the four-legged teammates that pull at the leashes that keep them from dashing around his 13 acres. Though Downey, 46, lives in Bucks County, not the outskirts of Anchorage, he works hard to train his Alaskan huskies without snow, using, instead, sand and Rube Goldberg-esque exercise equipment.

Although I had anticipated that it would happen, it was still with some surprise that I found myself being dragged in the snow behind eight powerful, excited Siberian huskies, one desperate hand on the sled handle and legs flailing behind me in what our guide good-naturedly referred to as "an Indiana Jones." I managed to pull myself back on the sled and bring it to a halt. As I waited for my wife, Kerry, to limp her way over because she had been knocked off the sled halfway down the hill, I found myself breathing heavily, surrounded by a stunning, snowy landscape.

On a bracing morning in early winter, 12-year-old Miranda Gindling is about to speed along the Northern Central Railroad Trail in Monkton, pulled by a team of four eager huskies. Not a snowflake's in sight. "Do you get motion sickness?" Catherine Benson asks. The co-founder of Maryland Sled Dog Adventures has finished harnessing the team into a wheeled conveyance called a rig. Miranda, a seventh-grade student at Sandy Spring Friends School who is working on a dog-sledding research project, shakes her head.

Bloodied but unbowed by the dog bites that yanked him from last year's race, 58-year-old Baltimore investment counselor Dan Dent is training for a return to the Iditarod, Alaska's most grueling sled dog race."

"Oh, my God!" It was happening again. Almost exactly a year after severe dog bites to his hands doomed his first attempt to complete Alaska's 1,150-mile Iditarod Trail sled dog race, Dan Dent was in deep trouble. In the darkness, at nearly the same spot on the Big Susitna River where the dog fight had broken out, the 58-year-old Baltimore investment adviser realized that his team of 16 huskies had lost the trail. He halted the team, set his sled's hooks like emergency brakes in the snow, and walked forward, intending to lead the dogs back to the main trail.

Edgar Nollner Sr., 94, the last survivor of a desperate 1925 dog team relay that carried diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska, died Monday in the Yukon River village of Galena. The serum relay inspired the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, an annual 1,100-mile run from Anchorage, Alaska, to Nome that began in 1973.

The famed iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race begins tomorrow with a ceremonial opening in Anchorage -- despite bad weather. Good weather for sled dogs is lots of snow, and this year there isn't any. Temperatures around Anchorage have been in the high 30s. So the race has been rerouted, with the real start Monday in Fairbanks instead of Wasillla. And the 65 mushers and their dogs won't even go through iditarod.

While "Balto" is fairly well-done and has a compelling story, it doesn't have anywhere near the magic of "Toy Story" and other (( movies from Disney."Balto" is the animated tale of the diligent sled dog who saved an Alaskan town from a diphtheria epidemic when he retrieved some antitoxin during a savage blizzard. It's based on a true story: The wolfhound is memorialized by a statue in New York's Central Park and by the Iditarod race, which follows Balto's life-saving route.Now, "diphtheria" and "antitoxin" are not exactly words that scream "Cartoon!"

If your image of Cleveland is that of an industrial town in the country's Midwest, you need an updated picture. On the banks of Lake Erie, Cleveland boasts a vibrant cultural and arts scene. In the coming weeks, the city will be in the headlines as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its newest members April 4. 1 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum : Cleveland is where a disc jockey coined the term "rock 'n roll" in the 1950s and the museum pays tribute to that music. The museum's treasures include handwritten lyrics, costumes, posters and videos.

Listening to barking dogs, working outdoors all night in frigid temperatures, sleeping on the floor and experiencing outhouses and unusual native cuisine constituted the dream vacation of a lifetime for Westminster veterinarian Nicholas Herrick.Dr. Herrick returned at the end of March from Alaska, where he was one of 20 trail veterinarians for the 21st Iditarod Sled Dog Race."This was something Nick always wanted to do," said his wife, Becky, 37, at their Bond Street home."Last winter we heard Dr. Al Townsend, a Chestertown, Md., veterinarian, speak about his experiences being a trail vet and it planted a seed," she said.