Edmonds woman’s missing sled dogs found

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Ten sled dogs that kept going after their musher fell off near Willow were found Wednesday, but one of the dogs died.

The surviving dogs sustained two days of hunger, fights and tangles while they were trapped together on their gangline.

The Anchorage Daily News reports Ted English, a veteran musher who owns the dogs, had loaned the dogs to Jan Stevens of Edmonds. The dogs got loose when Stevens fell off the sled just before 4 p.m. on Monday. Stevens is training for a possible run in the Iditarod with a team from English’s kennel.

The dogs were found about 10 miles from where they took off, anchored in place after the snow hook from the sled lodged in the snow, said Erin McLarnon, president of the Willow Dog Mushers Association, which coordinated the search efforts.

“Almost everybody had some type of bite wound on them, and a couple of them had already formed some abscesses, but nothing that’s life-threatening,” McLarnon said.

English said one of the dogs, Tappy, apparently had been strangled in the mess of harnesses.

Stevens, who has been mushing for about three years, said she was going down a hill in the woods when she hit a tree on her right and was thrown to the left. The sled stayed upright and the dogs kept running.

“I’ve dumped sleds in the past, I’ve been dragged, but I’ve always managed to hang on to the sled,” Stevens said. “I think it was just the impact on the tree that I was just kind of tossed from the sled. And I got to watch them go around the lake below me, and it was a beautiful sight. It was also a very sickening sight.”

English searched for the dogs right after the crash but he couldn’t catch up to them.

After a ground search with 25 people didn’t yield any results, a helicopter was called in Wednesday morning. The dogs were spotted soon after.

“When I got the phone call that (McLarnon) found the team, I just burst into tears,” Stevens said. “I was elated. And then she told me of Tappy’s fate, and it was heartbreaking.”