Insight: Into the Deep Freeze

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Stepping outdoors at this time of year can be a chilling experience but for me, the coldest conditions that I have ever been in happened to be when I covered sled dog racing in Laconia, New Hampshire for the daily newspaper there.

A musher guides a team of sled dogs during the World
Championship Sled Dog Derby in Laconia, New
Hampshire in 2015. COURTESY PHOTO 

In a tradition that harkens back to 1929, sled dog teams and mushers gather in Laconia every winter to compete in a three-day race in various classes on a 15-mile course around Lake Opechee and Paugus Bay. Some of the top sled dog racing teams from across the globe compete in what is billed as the “World Championship Sled Dog Derby.”

The first year I worked for the newspaper in Laconia the event was scrubbed because of a lack of snow and ice but by the time the second year rolled around, temperatures dropped below zero and there was plenty of snow to hold the races.

As the editor of the newspaper, I could have assigned a reporter to provide coverage of the sled dog races, but it was something I wanted to do myself. Being a longtime sportswriter, I had watched televised reporting of the 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska through the years and thought it would be interesting to attend this race in New Hampshire and write about it.

On the day that the Laconia races were to be held, the thermometer started dropping and fell 13 degrees overnight. When I started my car in the newspaper parking lot to drive to the event, it was minus 18 degrees and sunny at 10 a.m.

I had been forewarned to dress warmly and so I was wearing thermal underwear, a heavy sweater, a wool cap, a scarf, gloves, and an insulated parka. But even that combination did not prepare me for spending time interviewing racing participants in that sort of cold.

In under 10 minutes outside, I was told by a race administrator to go back to my car to warm up. He suggested that I conduct interviews and photography for the newspaper in 10-minute stretches, and in the meantime, he told me to leave my car running with the heat turned on and to retreat back there when I needed to warm up.

First off, I decided to interview a racing team musher from Syracuse, New York. He and his wife and son had brought their six-dog team to Laconia for the event. It was the second time they had competed there. He told me that all his dogs were Siberian Huskies, and they had recently replaced the team’s dog harnesses.

He told me that racing sled dogs each wear individual harnesses and then what are called tuglines are attached to those forming a loop which connects to a master gangline for the musher to guide the team. To keep each dog in the proper position, they can also be attached to a neckline for maximum control by the team’s musher.

Not every dog racing team was made up of huskies. I found out that some teams had Samoyeds or Malamutes, while other had Chinooks or German Shorthaired Pointers. All the dogs competing on the Syracuse team weighed between 35 and 65 pounds and their lead dog, a huskie named “Bo,” was placed in front because he was the oldest and the strongest of the entire team.

According to the musher, the team had practiced on their farm over the summer and fall. Each of the dogs’ meals were calculated and maintained by a veterinarian to keep their weight under control and to provide the dogs with plenty of power and energy for the racing circuit. This particular team from New York state would travel to events in Illinois and Ohio and throughout New England and Canada every winter to compete in sled dog racing and in six years had won eight different trophies and cash prizes.

They drove to the events each winter in a pickup truck pulling a camper which housed their dogs in crates when they weren’t racing. He said that his dogs weren’t bothered by the cold because they were accustomed to sub-zero temperatures.

I also interviewed a race official who monitored the start of the races. He told me that there were two categories for racing teams with one being for six-dog sleds and the other being “unlimited,” containing between 14 and 16 dogs in each team. Because each race was 15 miles and compiled over three days, he said the winning team was trying to log the best aggregate time accumulated in that time frame.

By the time those interviews were finished, I was absolutely freezing. Despite the layers of clothing I was wearing, the cold still penetrated and each trip back to the car to warm up took longer and longer. I stepped to a position on a snowbank near the starting line and got photographs of dog teams and mushers beginning that day’s race.

Being outside in minus 18-degree weather was not something I would prefer to do again, and it was the coldest I have ever been in my lifetime, but experiencing the sled dog races and writing about it is something I can say can be checked off my bucket list.<

Insight: Man on a Mission

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I was watching a baseball game last weekend when a special guest in the broadcast booth completely changed my opinion of him and made me think about what he had to say.

Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympic athlete of
all-time, winning 28 Olympic medals, including 23 gold
medals. COURTESY PHOTO 

During the fifth and sixth innings of Sunday’s game between the visiting Baltimore Orioles and the host Colorado Rockies in Denver, former U.S. Olympian Michael Phelps joined broadcasters Kevin Brown and Ben McDonald for a light-hearted discussion about Phelps’ connection to Baltimore, his Olympic career, and how closely he follows the Orioles.

I wasn’t aware that Phelps was born in Baltimore and grew up in nearby Towson, Maryland. His mother enrolled him in youth swimming at the age of 7 after his two sisters did well in the sport. He said that he only took swimming lessons initially because his mother, who was a middle school principal, insisted that he do so.

At first, Phelps was just an average swimmer but when his parents divorced when he was 9, swimming became an outlet for him. He struggled in school and by age 11, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) while in sixth grade.

One of his teachers then turned his life around by telling him that “he would never amount to anything.”

That’s when he poured his heart and soul into swimming and began to train at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under Coach Bob Bowman, a former collegiate swimmer whose approach to swimming was as Phelps puts it “exactly like a drill sergeant.”

He could not train under Bowman if his grades were poor, so during the school year, Phelps hit the books and then spent hours of training sessions in the pool. His work ethic and desire to win were so strong that he never missed a day of swimming training under Bowman’s direction for more than 20 years.

By age 15 in 2000, Phelps became the youngest swimmer to ever qualify for the U.S. Summer Olympics team. He didn’t win a medal in those games but finished fifth in the 200-meter butterfly. With an eye on the 2004 Olympics, he became the youngest swimmer to set a world record for the 200-meter butterfly during the World Championship Trials for the 2001 World Aquatic Championships at the age of 15 years and 9 months.

During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, Phelps captured six gold medals in six different events and two bronze medals in two others. In the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, Phelps competed in eight events and brought home another eight gold medals.

Competitors and doubters in the media suggested that Phelps might be on drugs, and continuing to win gold medals because of steroid use. Phelps responded by passing every drug test that was administered to him throughout his entire career.

He said he never let negative remarks bother him and that he attributes his success to always working harder than anyone else.

“While others were doing something else or celebrating the holidays, I was working and training,” Phelps said. “I never missed a day, and nobody was going to outwork me, and it helped me to achieve what I did.”

In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, Phelps won four more gold medals and two silver medals. Following the games, he was ready to retire and done with swimming after racking up 18 gold medals and being honored as the winningest Olympian of all-time.

Yet less than two years later, Phelps decided to unretire, and set out to convince Bowman that he wasn’t trying to show anybody up or to prove anything.

“I wanted to swim for myself and to enjoy the journey,” he told the Orioles broadcasters.

At the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Phelps was the U.S. flag bearer for the Opening Ceremonies and then shattered his incredible Olympic medal total by winning five more gold medals and a silver medal, before retiring from competitive swimming for good.

Now married and the father of four children, Phelps lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona where he volunteers as an assistant coach under Bowman for the Arizona State Swimming Team. Now 39, he covered the recent Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France as a broadcaster for NBC Sports.

In retirement, he founded the Michael Phelps Foundation, the Michael Phelps Swim School, and helped to develop a national pilot swimming program for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. He says his goal is to teach children the importance of being active and healthy by focusing on swimming.

During his career in competitive swimming, Phelps established 39 world records, and he amassed a total of 28 Olympic medals, with 23 of them being gold medals, which is the most ever for an Olympic athlete.

He said that his teacher’s comment inspired him all those years ago and that he believes his dedication to training propelled him to his monumental accomplishments in swimming.

Until Sunday’s baseball game, I never knew what made Phelps the fantastic swimmer that he was and I came away from listening to him with a greater appreciation of what it takes to reach the pinnacle of Olympic success and then stay at the top after getting there. <

Insight: Barking up the right tree II

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When our dog Fancy arrived in our household, my wife and I had no clues about how to coax proper behavior from a puppy. Our previous dog had been older when we adopted her and required little training. However, this new puppy was a boundless bundle of energy, and every experience was new to her.

Ed Pierce and Fancy upon completion of
her Basic Obedience Training class in 2017.
COURTESY PHOTO

While working for the newspaper, I had met a well-respected dog trainer who offered weekly lessons in a large garage adjacent to her home that had been converted into a training facility and kennel. I asked the trainer, Carolyn, if we could bring Fancy for Basic Obedience Training on Saturday mornings near our home in New Hampshire and she agreed.

For the next four months, we spent an hour every Saturday morning at Carolyn’s studio practicing basic commands and taming an incorrigible and spirited little creature with a mind of her own.

We learned how to sit and stay, lay down and come when called. We learned how to walk properly on a leash, how to heel, and basic doggie manners when encountering other dogs nearby.

Carolyn was also a breeder of Dobermans, a type of large dog which must have seemed intimidating to Fancy when she saw them there during her training.

At first, I wasn’t sure any of this was going to work. Fancy was intensely curious and somewhat anxious. She didn’t like being put on a leash and balked the first few times that Carolyn tried to teach her something new.

She was put into a crate in the mornings when we went to work, and we hired a staff member from the school where my wife worked to come in several times a day and let her outside for a while.

The crate was kept in the dining room and somehow it didn’t take Fancy very long to figure out if she leaned hard enough on a side of the crate, she could get it to move on our wood floor. That’s how I came to regret hanging a nice jacket over the back of a dining room chair one day only to come home from work and find the jacket torn to pieces inside the dog crate by Fancy.

She also severely tattered several of the sofa cushions and anything close by she could find to chew on. My wife tried recovering those shredded cushions, but they were too far gone for salvaging. When we eventually placed the sofa by the road hoping some impoverished college student would see it and haul it back to their apartment, we were mistaken. It sat there for weeks with its ratholes, and I ultimately had to pay a junk-hauling service to relocate it to the dump.

The puppy also had atrocious table manners. During dinner, if you weren’t careful, she would jump and snatch items off your plate in a fraction of a second. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointing it is to sit down at the supper table to a full plate of food only to have a puppy leap and in one swoop grab a Sloppy Joe sandwich and swallow it whole. It didn’t matter what it was, it could be burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, or slices of toast, anything you fixed to eat was fair game for Fancy.

In discussing this bad behavior with Carolyn, she suggested either putting Fancy in a crate in another room during dinner or placing her on a leash and keeping my foot on the leash to prevent her from leaping up and grabbing food off the dinner table while we were eating. We tried the crate option first but abandoned it because we couldn’t stand the crying, loud whining, and barking coming from Fancy while we were eating. The leash idea worked better, but have you ever tried to eat a meal one-handed while holding a dog leash in the other hand?

Over time, Fancy came to love going to Caroline’s for training on Saturday mornings. She did learn how to sit, stay, heel, lie down and come and she even was able to exhibit those tasks on cue and off-leash.

She scored 100 percent on her Basic Obedience Test and graduated from Carolyn’s Canine College with a certificate and a trophy. Because that training was successful, we continued visiting with Carolyn and Fancy eventually completed Good Neighbor Training and Therapy Dog Training with her. She was able to sit quietly when surrounded by a dozen other larger dogs and not growl during her final Therapy Dog test.

More than anything, the training was beneficial for Fancy in learning to control her excitement and teaching her the correct way to behave and how to interact with people and other animals.

Fancy is now 8 and has settled down quite a bit. She loves going for walks in our neighborhood and is great with children and is very gentle. On occasion though, every now and then she feels compelled to leap and grab a burger off our dinner plate, so we’ve adapted to eating in a guarded manner and not to walk away from the table, even if only for a minute, leaving our plates unguarded. <