For the dogs

Whether by car or by plane, many Jay County residents traveled about 1,000 miles this week to spend time in Florida for spring break.

When Karen Land makes her visit Saturday to Jay County, it’ll be to discuss a far different kind of long-distance trip and mode of transportation.

Land, a three-time competitor in the Iditarod dog sled race, will share her experiences with a presentation at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Community Room at Jay County Public Library. She’ll be joined by one of her dogs, Noggin.

It serves as the capstone to a series of events this month at the library, including and igloo-building craft from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. today, a free showing of the movie “Iron Will” at 6 p.m. tonight and a life-size version of an Iditarod-themed board game from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday.

“We booked her, and then it just kind of grew into a big thing with a whole month full of streaming the Iditarod race, and crafts and activities,” said Cheryl Lucas, JCPL’s adult services librarian. “I think Alaska is something that always interests people, but not a lot of people get a chance to go there.”

Land took her own unusual path to Alaska, having grown up in Indianapolis.

While in college in the Circle City, she was working at a veterinary hospital and became the owner of a mixed-breed stray dog named Kirby. She started going hiking and backpacking with him by her side.

“I just got so into being outdoors,” she said. “It was definitely inspired by the dog.”

She became so passionate about the outdoors that she transferred to the University of Montana in order to be somewhere more mountainous.

After getting her undergraduate degree in fine arts with a minor in wilderness studies, she moved on to graduate work for documentary writing in Maine. As part of that process, she put together a documentary about a musher who was trying to qualify for the Iditarod.

She was hooked.

Moving back to Montana, she started working for Terry Adkins, a 21-time participant in the Iditarod who has been in the top 10 three times. Land competed in the first of her three Iditarods in 2002, finishing 49th.

The details of the annual March race are daunting.

The official distance is 1,049 miles, though it varies depending on the route taken from Settler’s Bay to Nome in Alaska. It’s typical for teams to run through blizzard conditions in sub-zero temperatures with wind chills dipping as low as negative 100.

But the biggest challenge, Land said, was not so much the distance, the cold or the snow, but the lack of sleep.

“For most mushers, that’s a major problem. We’re running day and night,” she said, noting that teams run throughout the night and then rest their dogs during the heat of midday. “We’re definitely running a completely different schedule than a normal human.”

Land’s best time came in 2004, when she finished in 12 days, six hours, 45 minutes and 19 seconds. (The first race winner needed more than 20 days, while Mitch Seavey set the record this year at eight days, three hours, 40 minutes and 13 seconds.

Saturday’s presentation will include information about the lifestyle of a musher — it’s basically a year-round pursuit to run the Iditarod — the history of dog-sled racing and the dogs and breeds involved.

Though Land hasn’t taken part in the sport’s signature event in more than a decade, she still has a team of dogs — Alaskan huskies Romano and Noggin, a corgi-springer mix named Chloe and a 15-year-old German Jagdterrier named Jigs.

“For me, the dogs are totally why I do it,” said Land, who has given more than 1,000 presentations at schools and libraries over the course of 17 years. “I keep thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll stop. But I have such a great interest in it and I really enjoy being able to travel around to small town libraries and schools. … It’s fun to be able to talk to people in person about my love of the outdoors and try to kind of inspire people to have a desire to get outside and spend time outside … with their animals.”