For if nothing else, it is certain the dogs changed everything for the musher who not all that long ago was living with his family in a tent near Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula.

The accommodations could have been considerably worse.

Before Mackey decided to become a big-time dog musher, or at least to try, he was headed down a trail -- not to Nome, but to the Big House.

Mackey made his Iditarod debut in 2001 as a 30-year-old, but about a decade earlier there were arrests for theft, forgery and more. He has never tried to hide it, notes friend and fellow Iditarod musher Aaron Burmeister from Nenana.

"To be quite honest,'' Lance said, "it wasn't too many years ago when my parents didn't have much hope for me."

But the dogs yanked his life onto a new trail.

And when cancer struck years later to threaten a dog mushing career finally looking as if it might amount to more than just the silliness of Walter Mitty dreams, the dogs again pulled Mackey through.

"He'd park his truck in the middle of the dog lot and just sit there with them,'' said father Dick Mackey. "He'd take hours with a bucket to go around and water them all.''

Dick now believes the bond forged between man and beasts in these quiet hours of personal desperation -- when Lance knew how close he was to the thin boundary between life and death -- probably played a bigger part than anyone can imagine in events to come.

SOME PERSPECTIVE

Since Mackey crossed the finish line March 13, it has been repeated over and over how no one thought it possible for a dog team to win the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race between Whitehorse, Yukon, and Fairbanks and then hit the trail 11 days later to trot to victory in the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome.

Merely citing the accomplishment, however, provides little perspective as to enormity of this achievement. So demanding are these events that fewer than 100 people finish one race or the other each year.

It has become a bit of a cliche to observe that more people have reached the deadly summit of Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain, than have reached Nome on the runners of a dog sled, and that still understates Mackey's accomplishment.

So consider this:

As of this month, only 198 mountaineers had ever managed the dangerous task of reaching the highest summits on all seven continents. Fewer than 20 people have completed the Quest and the Iditarod in the same year.

Of this tiny group, only one musher has posted back-to-back finishes in the Top 10 of both races: Lance Mackey.

And only one went on to win both races back to back: Lance Mackey.

"It's like a fairy tale,'' said 74-year-old father Dick, himself an Iditarod champ from way back in 1978.

Lance Mackey isn't a guy who started as the king of the hill -- quite the opposite.

"I grew up with Lance,'' said Danny Seavey of Seward, who, though some years younger than Lance, started racing the Iditarod along with him.

"He was the joke of our (Iditarod) rookie group,'' Seavey said.

Not without reason.

Hidden in the shadow of half-brother Rick Mackey from Nenana, who won the 1983 Iditarod, Lance appeared more amateur than pro, a somewhat bumbling musher not nearly the master of checkpoint efficiency he's become.

Mackey finished 36th among the 57 teams to reach Nome in his rookie race of 2001. It was a respectable finish but without any hint of greatness.

Five-time champ Rick Swenson, by contrast, was 10th in his first Iditarod. Lance showed no such promise, but he did make one telling observation. Noting that his dad and half-brother had both won in their sixth Iditarod wearing bib 13, he said:

"I figure in six years, if I get up there and draw 13, the race is over.''

This was the sixth year, but the Iditarod rules had changed to allow the first musher to sign up the opportunity to pick his starting number. Lance was first in line to win that competition.

And he picked lucky number 13.

'HE NEVER DOUBTED'

No one in the world of long-distance sled dog racing picked Lance Mackey to win this Iditarod.

It was more than the fact that he was coming off the challenging Quest trail. His enthusiasm, free spirit, the seemingly almost reckless abandon with which he approaches and enjoys life were at odds with the methodical, science-based approach of the technocrats who have dominated the race in recent years. Defending champ Jeff King from Denali Park made news by swimming his dogs like triathletes and letting them sleep in altitude chambers like top nordic skiers in preparation for the Iditarod. The previous champ, Robert Sorlie, was said to have access to training advice from Norwegian scientists who helped that country's nordic skiers dominate.

Lance Mackey had 32 dogs and a new home up on Murphy Dome near Fairbanks where there is neither running water nor power, but it was a step up from living in a tent, as he did early on in Kasilof.

And he had a dream:

Win his third Quest in a row and then snatch an Iditarod victory.

"He never doubted that he could do it,'' Dick said.

"This dog team might not get a second glimpse from some folks,'' Lance confessed at the White Mountain checkpoint as he waited to march the last 80 miles to the biggest sled dog victory of his life, "but to me it's the style and the dogs that work for me.

"They are the true stars. Everybody's wanting to talk to me and interview me. They should be taking pictures of these guys and asking them questions. They're the ones who did this. I just happened to be the fortunate passenger."

And what would lead-dog Larry say if someone asked how he felt?

"He'd say, 'I feel like a champion, but I'm kinda tired.' ''

He had a right to be. Mackey and his dogs put in 3,000 miles of training leading up to the Quest, raced 1,000 miles, took a couple weeks off, then hit the trail again. Dick, who now winters in Arizona, said it was hard to get Lance on the telephone because he was almost always on the trail.

The 36-year-old musher says this is the dedication it takes to win.

"Mushers are known to be ... selfish,'' he said. "It's been all about me (and the dogs), and my family has been second. But I think now it's time to ask my wife (Tonya) what is her dream.''

That might not prove an easy thing to accommodate, though. Like most of those who have found Iditarod success, Mackey had both the desire and a love of the musher's life. Training and caring for sled dogs is a demanding day-in and day-out chore. People who don't love it can't stick, and Mackey clearly loves it. He said he keeps going back to the Quest, not so much for the race as for the race course.

"It's hard for me not to go back,'' he said. "It's peaceful. You get time alone to do the things you need to do for driving dogs. You don't have to run through a checkpoint every day.

"The first year I ran the Quest was an absolute pleasure, warm weather, no real overflow, just the opposite of every reputation the Quest has. But this year was everything the Quest has a reputation of being. Absolutely miserable. Good trail, but 60 below, 70 below in places, they claim.

"I don't officially know that. I don't carry a thermometer for that reason alone. I know if it's 70 below I'm cold.''

For most people, this is unimaginably cold. Just to endure this, you must love what you are doing.

Lance loves it, and he and his parents are proud of how he's turned his life around.

"For me to change my way of thinking, my bad habits, my lifestyle and actually accomplish something?

"I'm sure there are some that are just as proud of their kids as (my dad) is of me, but I'm not so sure.

"I seen the way my mom and dad walked in here. To me, that's as rewarding as the new truck I'll be driving,'' Lance said at Iditarod Headquarters in Nome.

"This race was absolutely priceless. It made my family proud."

---

Daily News Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com. Reporter Kevin Klott can be reached at kklott@adn.com.