If you’ve never heard the legend of Blowhole, I can tell you all about it, because I was there from the start.

　　My husband and I are dogsledders. Wisconsin-based, though we travel; when your life revolves around sled dogs, you’re always chasing snow. We met Blowhole in April 2018. I had entered the Kobuk, an unsupported, 440-mile race between seven remote villages in the Alaskan Arctic, and I’d borrowed dogs from a few friends to fill out my team. One of them was a shaggy black and white two-year-old owned by Inupiaq musher Ryan Redington. Like most modern sled dogs, he was an Alaskan husky: a thick-furred, super-athletic mutt. He was named for the vicious wind tunnels that form on the Bering coast, the ones that threaten to throw you out to sea and, heck, halfway to Siberia. Blowhole.

　　The race started on ice. Blowhole pulled hard, muscles rippling under fur, as we crossed the wind-carved surface of Kotzebue Sound. No sooner had we reached land than he stepped into a moose hole—a deep, tube-shaped footprint left by the antlered beast. He charged on, but his gait was off; he’d tweaked a wrist. I unhooked his harness and made him ride with me in the sled.

　　It feels heartless, carrying a dog that wants to run, but not as heartless as what I did next—though I acted with genuine concern. In the village of Selawik, I left Blowhole with race volunteers so his wrist could rest and heal. He was given warm food, a straw bed, attention, and massages. I knew we’d see each other again when the race was over. But he was distraught. All he wanted was to keep going. He howled desperately as the other dogs and I continued down the trail without him.

　　Days later, after the race, my husband and I brought Blowhole back to Ryan’s place in Knik. Immediately after we left, we discovered that the brakes on our truck were barely working. We white-knuckled it to a repair shop, where a mechanic diagnosed the problem and scrawled it on our $1,200 bill: Brake lines chewed by dog.