FAIRBURY - 20 years after she competed in some of the world's most famous snow-based races, one woman and her sled dog are traveling the country sharing their stories.
And this month, they're in Nebraska.

Hosted by the Fairbury Public Library, about 50 people of all ages grabbed seats in Fairbury's historic Bonham Theatre on Monday night to meet Karen Land, who brought some of the clothes, gear, and tales that helped guide her through the Iditarod and other sled dog races in the mid-2000s.

Land said she knew nothing about mushing growing up in Indianapolis, but a longtime love of animals led her to work at an animal hospital. At one point, a dog bred to hunt wild animals in Louisiana swamps showed up at the hospital and they couldn’t find its owner.

Land took it in and named it Kirby, and found it possessed boundless energy that needed an outlet. So she took Kirby on bike rides around Indiana, and eventually the two hiked the length of the Appalachian Trail. She passed nights by reading books acquired from local libraries along the path – one of which was "Winterdance" by Gary Paulsen, a retelling of his own experiences running the Iditarod.

For Karen, that book inspired a passion for the Iditarod and for mushing in general. That passion, she says, is also essential for all the dogs that make up a typical mushing team. For animals as smart and energetic as these dogs are, experience is essential as well. 

"If you go back to that same trail the next year, that dog’s going to be looking around like it’s thinking, ‘Whoa, we were here last year and it was not that much fun.’ And they won’t be excited to go,” she said. “The gasoline in a sled dog’s engine is based on their joy, their enthusiasm, their desire. We always want our dogs to be like ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna go!’ So if a dog isn’t having a good day, they’re just like people, we can drop a dog [from the team] and it’s fine, it’s not a big deal." 

Of course, one of Monday's main attractions was Land's presenting partner, an Alaskan husky named Sophia. She's part of a breed of dogs that have been designed to survive the constant harsh conditions of sled racing, like Siberians or other huskies, but with a slightly different structure.

"The dogs are all the same breed even though they look different," Land explained. "The dogs originated in the villages of Alaska – basically they took whatever dogs they had and bred them together to make the perfect working dog."

Sophia wasn't part of Karen's team when she was racing in Alaska 20 years ago. In fact, she's only been part of the team for a couple of months after Noggin, Karen's last travel partner, passed away earlier this year. But now Sophia is part of Karen's team that travels the country reliving those experiences she gained on tundras and slopes from Alaska to Maine and in between two decades ago. 

They will be making appearances at schools and libraries across Nebraska throughout the rest of the month of November.