Musher's dream survives
Baltimore's Dent back after mauling in '99 Iditarod

By CRAIG MEDRED
Daily News outdoors editor

The nightmare of the mauling Dan Dent suffered at the hands of his dog team early in the 1999 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is largely a memory now.

His physical scars have healed, and the musher from Baltimore believes he has put the mental ones behind him, too, after a smooth run through the Copper Basin 300 Sled Dog Race last month.

Still, his voice betrays a touch of nervousness when asked about his biggest worry going into his second attempt at the 1,100-mile wilderness trail between Anchorage and Nome.

"My greatest fear ... would be some goof up coming from me," Dent said. "I want to be able, after this race, to look back on it fondly and say, 'This was the greatest experience of my life.' "

Dent's first try at the Iditarod was among his worst experiences. The victim of a mauling at the teeth of his own dog team, he ended up in an Anchorage hospital only hours after the race began.

He made a lot of mistakes, he says now. The most notable, he believes, was introducing a new female dog into the team on race day.

The social structure of the team wasn't established to begin with, Dent said. The dogs he leased - mainly those that didn't make Iditarod contender Tim Osmar's team - hadn't run together enough before the race.

"There was no cohesion," Dent said.

And that was before Dent got the chance to pick up a high-performing female on race day. She replaced a weaker female, a move that Dent thought would strengthen his team.

Now, he wonders.

The new dog was at the heart of the vicious fight that broke out after Dent's team strayed off the trail and wallowed in deep Susitna River snow on the first evening of last year's event.

Dogs quickly became tangled in harnesses and ganglines. A relatively inexperienced musher, Dent was a hair slow to react.

"I never had a fight before," he said at the time. "Every now and then, a dog will snap or growl, but nothing like this.

"They were all going at (Storm) like a bunch of hyenas. They were all going for the kill. It was a pretty ugly sight. ... I was just watching the other dogs try to eat Storm alive.

"If I didn't get in there, Storm was going to get killed."

So Dent waded in. In the waist-deep snow just off the trail, he had limited mobility. He tried pulling dogs apart, but every time he did, others got into the fight.

That led to a fateful mistake. Dent removed his gloves to undo a snap that held Storm to the gangline. He wanted to snatch the center of attention out of the fight.

By then, though, the dogs were in such a frenzy they didn't know or care what they bit into. Several of them sunk fangs into Dent's hand and arm.

"The thing I don't think you understand is how lightning fast they are with their teeth," Dent said.

Eventually, he broke up the dog fight, but by then his hands and arms were a mess. He tried to go on, but a race judge at Skwentna caught him using his forearms to unload a cooker from his sled bag and asked what was wrong.

Once officials found out, they persuaded Dent he couldn't go on.

"My hands were just hamburger," he said. A medical technician took a look and fainted. Dent ended up being flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center.

As veterinarians treated Storm, who survived,the 58-year-old investment counselor sat in a hospital room and contemplated how his Iditarod dream had gone sour.

Back home in Baltimore more than a week later, he thought about giving up his dream to mush to Nome when Dario Daniels, an Iditarod musher Dent had known for six years, called.

Daniels had just finished the Iditarod. He'd been talking to Englishman Max Hall, who had finished the race in less than 13 days to claim 37th place and the most-improved musher award. Hall wanted to sell a bunch of dogs.

Was Dent interested?

The Baltimore man realized he had the opportunity to get some well-trained dogs and grabbed it.

"We basically got the front end of Max Hall's team," Dent said. Those dogs, it is worth noting, came from the Iditarod-winning dog team driven by Montanan Doug Swingley in 1995.

Suddenly, Dent was back in the mushing business with a core of solid veterans. With Daniels helping in Alaska and Dent providing the money, more dogs were obtained, a camp was set up near Homer, and Wendy Smith - an Englishwoman who had taken a dog team across Canada to raise money for cancer - signed on as a dog handler.

Once again, Dent began commuting to Alaska to spend time with his sled dogs. With training from Daniels and Smith, Dent has improved.

Last year, he struggled through the Copper Basin 300, an Iditarod qualifying race. This year it proved a pleasure.

"The Copper Basin was exactly what I was looking for," he said. "When I raced Copper Basin, what we really wanted to do was use that to prepare for how we will run Iditarod."

Running on a slower, Iditarod schedule, Dent was 20th out of 28 finishers, but he didn't drop a dog. At the end, the dogs appeared eager to go another 300 miles, he said.

"I really feel good about this team," Dent said. "Anything can happen out on the trail, but I think we can finish."

Not that it's going to be easy.

Back home in Baltimore, Dent has spent the past several weeks undergoing physical therapy for mushing injuries that stem from his periodic journeys to Alaska to train for Iditarod 2000.

Among other problems, he has a torn rotator cuff, the result of being dragged upside down and backward behind a dog sled while adhering to the first rule of mushing: Never let go of the handlebar.

The shoulder aches, Dent said, but doesn't present any physical problems when doing chores below shoulder level. He can't reach higher, though.

The other problem is carpel-tunnel syndrome, which he links to the death grip he sometimes uses on the handlebar of the sled when nervous.

"The stress on your hands, wrists and forearms is like holding a jackhammer," Dent said. He is trying to learn to relax a bit so that the handlebar doesn't transmit every little bump into his wrists and forearms.

"These are not major things," Dent added. "They're just bothersome. At my age, I've got a limited number of races left."

He's hoping this one finally turns out successful.

"It's just such a privilege to go up there and run Alaska dog trails," Dent said. "The unfortunate incident last year had the result of getting me to go in the race this year.

"I want to enjoy this thing this time."

Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com