Trooper breaks out dog team for Iditarod events

BY ANDREW WELLNER

Frontiersman

WILLOW — Alaska State Troopers have the kind of job that requires a lot of flexibility where transportation is concerned.

It’s not uncommon to find troopers in helicopters or bush planes, on boats, or driving snowmachines or ATVs.

Recently, though, the most iconic means of Alaska transportation — dog sled — has become a rarity. Now and then a trooper in the bush will mush between villages. But by and large troopers use the type of transport that includes an engine.

Alaska State Trooper Terrence Shanigan is doing his part to change that.

Based in Talkeetna, Shanigan has been spending a good percentage of his off-duty time on the back of a custom-made sled, mushing a team of borrowed dogs to prepare for his day in the spotlight.

And that day is today.

Shanigan said Friday he plans to be in Willow on Sunday for the Iditarod Restart, pulling light patrol duty on a dog sled and spreading goodwill among the public. On the patrol side, Shanigan said he hopes the dog team will allow troopers to minimize use of snowmachines, particularly around the starting chute. As an outreach tool, he hopes it will promote education of the public and recruitment of new troopers.

Shanigan said he didn’t come to dog-sled duty as a neophyte. He’s driven his share of dog teams.

“When I was elementary, junior high age, it was something that was frequent,” Shanigan said. “My cousin, actually, in junior high had a sled.”

And he’s not going to be alone out on the trail. Ahead of him will be a dog handler from the kennel that loaned him the dogs — Barking Lot Kennel in Willow. And behind him will be Alaska Wildlife Trooper Thomas Akelkok. Both will be on snowmachines.

Shanigan said this whole thing couldn’t have come together without the help of Akelkok. The two have been working as a team since about November. Akelkok, whose father built dog sleds, built the trooper-patterned sled himself, with help from his family.

“Whenever a modification or a change needed to be made to it they were right up on top of it,” Shanigan said.

He said the sleds — in addition to the one he’ll be using, a backup will be at the trooper command post on Willow Lake Sunday — are beautiful.

“The sleds that we’re building are molded in a traditional fashion. They don’t use a lot of plastics or rubber or aluminum,” he said.

The sled bag has many of the same logos found on a trooper patrol car. Inside the bag, Shanigan will carry all the emergency gear he has to have in his patrol car — sleeping bags, cold weather gear, a first aid kit. Even a Breathalyzer. And they have flashing LED lights on them, though Shanigan said he doesn’t plan on pulling anyone over.

“It’s something that would stand out to somebody and give visibility,” in low light or poor weather, he said.

And while the rollout of the trooper dog sled team is to be a small affair — after the re-start they’ll be done — the program as Shanigan envisions it will be wide-ranging and very visible.

Shanigan and Akelkok are members of the troopers’ Rural Recruitment Team, which has a mission to boost the numbers of rural Alaskans and Alaskan Natives who don a trooper badge.

“We don’t have enough of us as far as a representative group,” said Shanigan, a Native whose family hails from the Bristol Bay region.

Shanigan said he hopes to see trooper dog teams going out into villages to talk to youngsters. At future Iditarods, he said, maybe troopers on sleds will move between villages along with the racers and make a big showing in Nome. In the near term, he said, after the race is over the sleds will be sent around the state to recruitment booths, to return to the Valley in time for next year’s race.

“What we want to do is figure out how the relationship between the Last Great Race and the last great career can function, come together and find some common elements,” Shanigan said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.