“I’ve Learned to Be Patient”
By June Price

A smile crosses Eric Rogers face as he prepares to tell me about one of his favorite dogs.

“They are all favorites, of course,” he says, “but let me talk about a dog that isn’t here now.” Thus begins the story of how a shy dog became a beloved leader.

“Sparkle and her brother were the first real racing sled dogs I got. Since they were so shy, I thought I’d bring them into the house and put them in crates in the kitchen where they would feel safe. I figured they could watch us and become used to us that way.”

He chuckles.

“Both dogs walked into the crates and stood facing the back wall. I got a piece of hot dog and placed it at their feet and they didn’t move. So we went to bed that night. Next morning Sparkle was still standing facing the back wall – looked like she had spent the night there. Tuco had lain down in place still facing the back wall and neither had touched their hot dog all night.”

“This idea obviously wasn’t working so I put them in the dog lot. Even there, when I fed them, neither would eat until I left the lot. Even more amazing, I’d stand outside the fence and if I didn’t look they ate. If I did look, though, they wouldn’t.”

Keep in mind, a dog that won’t eat isn’t a good candidate to make your team.

Eric persevered, however. “It took a year before Sparkle quit running into the dog house when I entered the dog lot,” he remembers. “Two years later Sparkle was one of my best leaders – driven to please me. If I asked that girl to fly she would run down the trail and flap her ears, I swear she would try. I had her going up to strangers for affection. Sweet and totally devoted to me. Small, bright, affectionate, and driven to please.”

Like many mushers, Eric came to Alaska and that point in his life by a circuitous route.

“I came to Alaska in January 1992 with my Chesapeake Bay Retriever looking for work,” he said. “I was walking her for an hour every evening and realized that if I got a pair of skis and a harness she could pull me. It was pretty neat, but I wanted to go further and see more, so the next winter I added my daughter’s Border Collie to the team. Same story, so the third winter I added my other daughter’s Malamute and was skiing with 3 dogs.”

“Now, I’m not that great a skier,” he admits with a chuckle, “so when I saw an ad for an old sled and a couple of dogs I jumped right in – sleds have brakes! That was January 1994 and the rest is history.”

To back up just a tad, Eric, who has a Ph.D. in physics, was born in born in Los Angeles, California in 1947, and moved to Fort Collins, Colorado in 1958. After that, it was graduate school in Chicago. He was drafted and trained in San Antonio, TX, Sacramento, CA, and served at Plattsburgh AFB, NY. He went back to graduate school in Seattle, WA, after being discharged, got a job with Shell Oil in Houston, TX, and finally moved to Alaska in 1992. Eric and wife Marti have four children, all grown: Delphine (Colorado), Dawn (North Carolina), Andi (Alaska), and Liz (North Dakota). There are 5 grandchildren between the bunch.

Wife Marti is just as involved with the Iditarod as Eric, I might add. She is the Iditarod’s phone room coordinator at the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage during race weeks. This involves her overseeing and coordinating a list of volunteers who take phone calls and questions from all over the world, from family, friends, fans and media. It’s a vital aspect of the race and it’s unlikely anyone who’s ever attended the race and passed through the hotel hasn’t poked their head in the door for an update or word with the volunteers at some point.

Ironically, Eric doesn’t consider himself much of an athlete.

“I was never the athlete – in football I played drawback,” he jokes. “I did a lot of fishing, hiking, and camping. If non-competitive walking was a sport I’d have done well.”

Despite this, he grew up with dogs, a familiar pattern with many mushers.

“I trained my first dog, a black Lab, when I was eighteen,” he recalls. “There is something really special about working with a well trained dog – doesn’t make any difference what you do, but the bond you build is very rewarding.” It’s this bond that lead him to mushing.

While many mushers mentor with an experienced musher, Eric admits to initially from books. Anyone who’s ever visited the Rogers’ home and seen his collection of Alaska and/or mushing books wouldn’t doubt this for one moment. If it’s on the hard to find list, Eric may very well have it. He admits, however, that this approach wasn’t perhaps the best to have taken.

“One of the mistakes I made getting into the sport,” he says, “was to never really have a mentor. Several people helped me along the way, and I could always find someone to answer questions, but I learned most of it myself from books in the beginning.” One person who has been there consistently for him, however, and is now his coach is Lexi Hill. Like Eric, Lexi is an active member of the Chugiak Dog Mushers Association, which boasts another rookie Iditarod musher this coming year, Bryan Bearss.

Asked about his strengths as a musher, Eric says, “I understand the principles of dog training – I taught obedience classes before I started mushing. And I love working with dogs. Since I started I’ve learned to be more patient and more consistent and to expect more from my dogs.”

“My weaknesses are lack of experience, plus I’m a typical type A – I stress very easily and the dogs pick up on that. If I could read them half as well as they read me I do much better.”

Eric works to make that happen. Beside the usual time spent with the dogs while caring for them or training, he admits he’s one of those who bring his dogs into the house.

“I do a “dog de jour” program,” he explains, “where, if I’m going to be watching TV or laying around, I bring in a dog for company. I try to rotate through the kennel – there are the dogs that make me feel particularly good, and those I bring in because they need the socialization.”

As far as his philosophy of which dogs are likely to make the team, Eric says he “assumes that everyone will make the team until they tell me different.”

For the most part, he says he says if a dog isn’t developing as he’d expected, he doesn’t just write them off. “I’ll wait until they are two before I believe that they won’t grow out of it. One of the advantages / disadvantages of a small kennel,” he points out, “is that I don’t have a lot of choices – I pretty much have to work with each dog and try to get them to succeed.” Eric’s kennel is made up of just nineteen dogs.

If a dog has a problem, “it’s always the mushers fault and nearly always a training problem,” he says. “The dogs are honest and do what they do because they are dogs and that’s they way you have trained them, or not trained them to do.” He looks to himself first, in other words, if there is a problem.

While racing, Eric likes to start slow and ease into the race. My goal is “maintaining a strong fast happy dog team to come from behind and overtake teams that started to fast.”

He admits that this isn’t always easy.

“The challenge is to hold to that thought when everyone else is passing you.” He managed to follow that philosophy in the Goose Bay 120 this year, he says, and went from last to fifth by the end of the race.

“It sure felt good to pass teams later in the race instead of being passed and finishing last!” he says.

Asked about his proudest moment as a musher so far, however, he reverts to memories of a training run.

“I was out with a six dog team when my leader quit,” he recalls. “She came into heat and decided she would rather breed than lead. We were just three miles from the trailhead, but without a leader it would be a very long walk home.”

This isn’t that unusual a situation, one many mushers plan for by trying different dogs in different spots. Eric has been no different.

“Without fail, every fall I asked each dog if they would like to lead, and every fall for three years my wheel dog said he just couldn't do it. Every fall I said OK, I still love you and you are a great wheel dog.”

“I went through every dog but him in the team looking for help. Normally, I might not have tried him because of his consistent desire not to lead. This time he was the only dog left, though, and I needed help.”

“So I asked him, ‘Pretty please, would you run lead just this once?” He looked at me a moment with his big blue eyes and said, 'Sure'. And, he did! Not only did he run lead, but he did it with authority and set such a pace the rest of the team was begging for mercy. He went on to become one of my best leaders. I was so proud I almost cried.”