It started with a stray dog.
Thought to be a lab/pit bull mix, Daphne showed up on Paul’s property in
Tucson, Arizona. She was not friendly, and her time on the streets was evident
as she maneuvered around the property. Since Paul used his land to shelter homeless
cats, there was no need for a dog. He chased her off his property. The dog came
back. He chased her off again, and fortified his fence. She dug under it. After
several rounds of this, Paul gave up. The dog could stay.
What he didn’t know at the time was that Daphne was pregnant. She took up residence under an R.V. to have her puppies. Once they were born, he could not help notice there was something special about them. Originally, he’d planned to find homes for them, but when five of the pups contracted the parvo virus, he had to choose between euthanizing them or setting up a hospital in his cottage. He borrowed $600 from a friend and administered daily doses of intravenous fluids. As he sat with them, he told them stories about the wonderful life they would have out of the city and in nature. The puppies recovered from this normally deadly virus.
One day, while walking with the seven pups, a neighbor standing at her gate said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to keep a family together?” The idea hit him like lightning. He knew that many families strive for that ideal, but what families ever truly achieve it? As an abstract impressionist painter living on social security, he knew it would be challenging. But so was raising his two sons as a single parent, after their mother died of leukemia.
He soon found out that dogs reproduce rapidly. After 8 months, there were 27 dogs. Doggie diapers, closed windows, and fencing were no obstacle when a dog was in heat.
As he wrestled with what to do, he began to dream about the dogs. In one dream, Paul was standing at the edge of a meadow surrounded by huge trees. A long path in a half circle, as if carved by a huge ice cream scoop passed below him. Six black dogs came running out of the forest pulling a long silver cylinder, like rocket without fins gliding in the path. The dogs stopped and looked at him with questioning eyes, ‘Do you understand?” He sat upright in amazement, a single question ringing in his brain, “How could dogs be pulling the future?”
It was his search for an answer that led Paul to keep this family of dogs together, and to train them as sled dogs. A year later, with the help of his sons, Aaron and Elijah, he moved from the warm environment of Tucson, Arizona, to edge of the great wilderness in the Matanuska Valley, with a view of Denali (Mt. McKinley), which is known as the “great one” to native Alaskans.
It took them two and a half weeks to travel from Arizona to Alaska. They drove a large truck with a 20-dog carrier and a cargo trailer packed to the brim. They stopped every four hours to water and exercise each dog. In mid August, they arrived in Big Lake Alaska. Paul had planned to rent space to live and train the dogs in an Iditarod training kennel. However, the space had been rented and things began to break down. With limited funds and no backup plan, he camped in a gravel pit, and soon rented a lot in the town of Willow, where many dog mushers with kennels live and train. Paul bought an old uninsulated travel trailer, and with only six weeks before the Arctic winter, he hurried to cut wood and get a wilderness kennel set up for the dogs. He had no idea he would be facing the worst winter in 26 years!
By November, the temperatures were hovering between ten and thirty below zero. In those weather conditions, all he could manage was to keep the dogs fed and cared for. His toes became frost bitten and survival was now his main priority. With three feet of snow, bitter cold, little daylight, and digging wood out of the snow, he was at his physical and psychological limit. For three months the dogs were tethered during the day and spent the nights on straw in the dog truck. It was a test for all of them.
It warmed to zero in mid January and he began to train the dogs. He started to learn the challenges that Alaskan dog mushers had mastered a long time ago. Without a lead dog, the dogs would stop to pee or sniff and didn’t obey commands. This resulted in the team becoming entangled in the harnesses and led to fights. Through this early experience, he found that determination alone wasn’t enough.
In March his sons returned to help. They located a musher and hired her to help train the dogs. Using a trained Iditarod leader, things changed quickly and sled dog training began in earnest.
Paul and his sons have a goal to complete the Serum Run, the re-enactment of the journey dog mushers and their dogs made in the 1920’s by making a 760 mile trek through the Alaska wilderness to save the people of Nome from a diphtheria epidemic. The Serum run helps raise public awareness of the need for vaccines, for humans and animals, as well as the devastating AIDS crisis.
The family has been filming their experience, and has logged about 200 hours of footage so far. They are looking for additional support to complete this film project and document their journey. You can view some of the early video and photos at http://straydogsjourney.com. The project is currently family funded.
In addition to the film, their dream includes the creation of a research institute to focus on a new model for life that is in harmony with nature and brings healing to animals and people.
I look forward to being at the film’s premiere and relishing a unique and amazing story.
