Love for sport, not money, drives mushers

MAT-SU — No matter how famous the last name, the economics of dog sledding is never in the musher’s favor.

The Redingtons are Iditarod royalty. Raymie Redington began mushing with a team owned by his father, Iditarod Sled Dog Race founder Joe Redington Sr. He has since retired from the race, but his sons, Ryan and Ray Jr., are in contention every year.

“If you have sponsors and stuff, you might break even,” Redington said. “But you won’t make money at it. It’s one of those things you do because you love.”

Redington explained a serious racing kennel has about 30 dogs the musher can pick a team from. This is in addition to the retired dogs, the dogs kept for breeding and the dogs not yet ready to race.

It’s typical to go though one 40-pound bag of dog food each day, Redington said. Each bag of food used to cost about $15, but in the last three years the price has jumped to more than $30 for the basic stuff and $40 for racing quality food.

“If I was racing them, it would cost probably around $1,800 a month,” Redington said. “But that’s just for food and such.”

Maintaining, training and feeding her kennel of 45 to 65 dogs is typically $25,000 per year, said 12-time Iditarod musher Lynda Plettner. And this doesn’t include vet bills or her labor.

Come Iditarod time, the expenses pile up, she said. There’s the $4,000 entry fee, $5,000 for food drops at the checkpoints and then transportation back from Nome. Each dog needs its own kennel for the plane flight — usually at about $100 each — and Plettner said typically a quarter of the kennels would break each year.

“There’s probably about 10 guys doing OK, but even sometimes the top guys don’t do well,” Plettner said. “You have to win or consistently stay in the top to get some real sponsorships.”

Zack Steer, who will stand behind the return on his investment today at the Iditarod restart in Willow, said he spends about $2,000 a year per dog. Steer finished third in the 2007 race, but said he only considers himself a competitive recreational musher.

“If you win the race, you could do OK,” Steer said. “But it’s pretty competitive this year. You can’t count on income from sled dog racing.”

Because the income from racing is so unreliable, most mushers have other, more lucrative employment. Steer is the owner and operator of Sheep Mountain Lodge, and Plettner owns three assisted living homes. But to defray the cost of the kennel itself, a bit of creativity is in order.

Steer only runs half a kennel. The other half of his team is from the kennel of Robert Bundtzen. The two mushers switch off using the team every other year.

In the off season, Steer will sometimes lease his dogs to a tour group offering sled dog rides to cruise ship passengers in Southeast. He said he doesn’t get much money, but tour operators feed and house the dogs while keeping them in shape.

Redington takes his team to the Iditarod Trail Headquarters in the summer to pull paying groups of tourists. Most of the other mushers he knows offer tours of their kennels in the summer, sometimes with a ride on a dog sled on wheels.

“At $30 or $40 a person with a busload of 50 people going together, you are making some money,” Redington said.

Plettner sends her dogs to the cruise ship tours in the summer, and she offers tours of her kennel as well. She has stopped racing for now and leases her team out during the race season to mushers without their own dogs or needing a replacement. She said she still likes training “superstar” dogs, and will sell them for as much as $3,000.

In addition to dogs, Plettner also trains mushers. She said she has trained 15 other Iditarod finishers from places as far off as Italy and Russia outfitted with what she calls her “liquid plumber” team.

“They know exactly where they are. You just put them on the trail and watch them work,” Plettner said.

With her two-year contract costing $50,000, Plettner said she does better in years when her students are running the race instead of her.

But despite her diverse efforts, Plettner said she is still losing money on her kennel “hand-over-fist.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.