Schnuelle considering 2017 return to Iditarod racing (with video)

TWO RIVERS — The Iditarod Trail's most famous wild hair could be back on the trail to Nome in 2017.

"Maybe, next year, I might run it one more time," Sebastian Schnuelle said recently in his distinctive German accent.

Schnuelle's competitive sled dog racing career climaxed in 2009 when he won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest between Alaska and Canada and finished second in the Iditarod to the then-unstoppable Lance Mackey.

"It was one of those magic years," Schnuelle remembered fondly.

After all, perennial distance mushers can go decades without everything falling together. Every detail must click, all at once — the financial support, the handlers, the training, the race strategy and, of course, the right dogs peaking athletically at the right time. For most mushers, that's difficult at best.

'No other life'

Despite being one of the sport's more accomplished dog drivers during his best years, Schnuelle decided after the 2011 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race— in which he recorded his fourth-straight top-10 finish — that he was done. The racing grind had become too much. Despite about $178,000 in Iditarod earnings, his money was dwindling, his kennel talent was aging and his puppy prospects were dim.

He knew he would have had to start from scratch with breeding. So he cut the number of his "monsters," as he lovingly calls them, in half and returned to his roots as a sled dog tour guide and mushing coach working in Juneau and Two Rivers. He needed to rebuild his retirement account and reclaim his sanity.

"Tours enable me to run dogs and have another life," he said. "Racing — if you want to do it well, you pretty much have no other life."

But second place is hard to forget.

"When you're still here in Alaska, and you have the dogs and everything, the itch is there," he said. "There's no doubt about it." To satisfy that desire, Schnuelle has spent the last several Iditarods working for the Iditarod Trail Committee, providing race commentary for the race's Iditarod Insider website. He plans to do it again this year.

But that's not the same. Now, in his fifth year since his last 1,000-mile race, the success of his Blue Kennels has allowed Schnuelle to consider the improbable, even though he says time is against him. "For myself, I know I'm not going to do this forever," said the 45-year-old musher. "But there's this little unfinished business. The dogs are of perfect age. I like them. So it's like, 'OK, let's give this baby one more shot next year!' But all the pieces have to fall into place."

'Damn near froze to death'

He plans to start this weekend with a middle-distance Iditarod qualifier: the Copper Basin 300. It's a race close to Schnuelle's heart.

"(I) didn't have any clue of what I'd got myself into," he said of his 1998 introduction to competitive mushing. "The first starting line I ever showed up to was the Copper Basin 300. Carhartt jacket. Little Sorel boots. Damn near froze to death on the trail."

Schnuelle has learned much since that first race. His most recent lesson is allowing the entire kennel of 20 to 30 dogs into his modest cabin at once. "Socialization," he insists. "It actually started out with a couple of dogs. And then I have a lot of clients here and they're (saying), 'Oh. Can we take the dogs inside?' And then out of a joke almost, 'Well, let's take them all!' And here we are."

It's quite a spectacle to see more than 20 dogs scrambling in through a narrow doorway, bounding over couches and chairs, only to quickly settle down into the spots they've claimed for themselves. "There is more to them than just pulling. You find out a lot more about their characters and who they really are," said Schnuelle, sitting on the floor in the middle of his pack. "That's a big part of the training too. In here, I can train things. In here, I can teach them to stop. No. Stay. They learn to learn in here."

This training development provides another lesson for Schnuelle. It's probably a good thing he hasn't been spending his money on racing. Now he'll have something left over for when the carpet cleaning bill comes due.