Durant Diary: Entry #1

September 13, 2025

Durant is a 10-year-old retired sled dog from Willow, Alaska. He has run in four Iditarods, each 1,000 miles long. He is extremely strong and built to withstand great adversity and cold. He is friendly with people, tolerant of other dogs, and very food driven. He’s not unlike our other three sled dogs. But he is more of a sled dog than all of them put together.

Durant is not feral, nor wild. He is simply deeply acculturated to a completely different way of life. Moving from Alaska to Wisconsin for Durant is like me moving from Wisconsin to Nepal. And once in Nepal, being expected to understand the weather, the food, the rules for waking and sleeping, how to talk, how to listen, and where to walk so as not to stand out as a foreigner.

In Alaska, Durant was in the dog yard tethered to his doghouse and protective of his ‘circle’ or he was ‘in team,’ harnessed with his mates for training or racing. He was also much loved by his musher, connected to her. This is typical of sled dogs. They don’t run if they don’t love their person. So, his life in Alaska was a good one but very focused on two states of being – tethered or in-team.

Here, we go to the dog park every day. Our expectation was, after a bit of a ramp-up, Durant would join Tempest in exploring smells, ducking into the woods, and trotting merrily down the path. We kept him on a leash, not sure we could call him back if he took off, but he wanted to stay by the gate. After a few visits, we unleashed him, and he took off at a dead run. We foolishly tried to catch him. That was yesterday.

After that episode, I hypothesized that he was afraid of freedom. That he was running so hard because he didn’t know where to go or what to do. And then I wove a whole scenario about how a man imprisoned for forty years feels back out on the street, overwhelmed by traffic, loud music, cellphones, and neon lights. Considered myself a dog genius, this was my pontification over coffee on the back porch this morning with my husband.

Then this afternoon, I accidently dropped the leash at the dog park and Durant took off. We stupidly called him and then tried to head him off at the pass, but he was fast and determined. Other people offered to help but there was no catching him.

So I sat down in a chair in the clearing and just waited. He flew by several times, running so fast his leash flew in the air behind him. And then he came around the bend, slowed to a trot, and came over to me. I told him what a good and amazing boy he was, kissed his wooly old dog man face, and picked up his leash.

Yesterday I thought Durant was afraid of freedom. Maybe. But today he looked thrilled. Like he had waited a long time to run fast down a path that he chose for himself.

Every day is going to be something like this, something new to figure out.

This dog is a lot.