parked next to us and while feeding his own hungry huskies, he glanced over.
“Don’t tell me this is one of your racing dogs,” he condescended, while looking down his nose at Goliath. “There’s no way—no way—this dog could be good. Look at that coat!”
We were aghast at the statement. As Leonhard Seppala (a legendary musher who played a pivotal role in the life-saving 1925 serum run to Nome) once said, “In Alaska, our dogs mean considerably more to us than those ‘Outside’ can appreciate and a slight to them is a serious matter.”
In mushing, if not all sports, there prevails an attitude that until you’re a somebody, you’re a nobody, so having this stranger act overtly rude to our faces was nothing new. What irked us more was his disbelief in Goliath—based on a mere glimpse. The piercing comment questioned the character of a dog that had for years dutifully served as one of the pillars of our race team, and whose unwavering endurance often made the difference between our success or failure.
To be fair, Goliath’s humble appearance and shy demeanor can be a bit misleading, and over the years many had read his introversion as synonymous with athletic impotence. Even Goliath’s original owner had cast doubt on him from the start, deciding to give his whole litter away while they were still tiny youngsters.
“I wouldn’t expect much from ’em, I had an accidental breeding on Iditarod and neither the female, or male that bred her, was that impressive,” the musher said, as we looked into a makeshift pen where several small pups were enthusiastically gnawing on the rib cage of a moose carcass from the inside out. They looked like a bunch of prisoners trying to chew through the fleshy-red and bony-white bars of their cell. Not expecting this litter to mature into up-and-coming champions, it appeared the pups were being fed modestly, making due on scraps such as the ruminant’s remains.
We feared for the future of these unplanned pups in an already overcrowded dog yard, especially since Cole and I were just starting to build a race team back then. To us the idea of getting a pup from dogs that made the cut for an Iditarod team seemed like better odds than what we were getting at the pound, where the sire or dame of some of our dogs—based on their adult appearance—had genetics ranging from greyhounds to malamutes, and several breeds between.
“We’ll take them,” we said.
As it turned out, the musher had already promised several of the dogs to other people, so we ended up with only one: a small, smoke-gray little fuzz ball with eyes as sweet and brown as root beer.
Despite his ignoble inception, we had high hopes for the dog he would grow to become. In those early years, until we learned to look for each dog’s individual strength and then utilize it, we longed for the type of hard-charging husky superstar we perceived existed in every successful kennel. In Goliath’s case, when he came into our lives, I was reading a book by Jane Goodall and in those pages lived a chimp named Goliath who, while small, was extremely brave. Hoping our new addition might one day display a similarly noble personality characteristic as this ape, we dubbed the dog with the same name.
We fell in love with Goliath immediately, but some of our other dogs took convincing. Shagoo, one of our cantankerous house dogs, greeted him in her usual manner: by promptly biting him in the muzzle, opening a huge gash. The wound eventually healed, leaving a scar he still has to this day, and like many traumatic events, the memories lasted longer than the injury. For months afterward Goliath gave Shagoo a wide berth, and fearfully whimpered and whined whenever she menaced him with her sinister appearance. In order to stay safe from the canine equivalent of Hannibal Lecter that he lived with, Goliath spot-welded himself to me, and an inseparable bond became forged.
At first it was about protection for Goliath, and he sat in our lap for safety, but over time his presence became commonplace regardless of where Shagoo lurked. During the workday, he rode shotgun with me when I went to the office, and sat in the driver’s seat people-watching for hours on end. Unlike some puppies who would thrash the inside of a vehicle if left alone, Goliath didn’t mind the solitude, and would only cause damage if Cole or I forgot a morsel of food somewhere in the cab. He demolished a bag of Doritos once in the few moments I stepped away to pump gas. All that remained from his nacho-flavored lapse in judgment were tiny crumbs showered across the driver’s seat and telltale neon-orange whiskers on his muzzle. Another time I tried to ward him off from woofing down my lunch by putting a six-inch sandwich in the center console, but like a termite dining on dry pine, he chewed his way through the interior upholstery, boring a big enough hole to get at my pastrami.
In the evening, when we turned our attention to conditioning our dogs, we were able to channel Goliath’s energy in a more positive direction. As with the workday, it was too risky to leave him home alone with Shagoo, but Goliath was too young to be put in harness, so we let him freerun alongside the adults. By four months old he would pace the team for twenty miles, smiling the whole way, his pink tongue flat and dangling from the side of his mouth. By six months old he seemed to understand the older dogs were connected to the gangline, so he started to actually try to insert himself into the team by squeezing between two dogs, pacing them.
Goliath developed into a strong and sturdily built dog, similar in appearance to a small timber wolf. He never weighed in at more than fifty pounds, but had a boxy muzzle, deep chest, muscular haunches, and a luxuriously thick coat even for a husky, complete with sable-coloring and a plume tail.
Goliath is an Iditarod and Yukon Quest veteran, but despite his racing resolve, he relishes curling up on the couch, especially when he can cuddle with the family.
When not running, his favorite pastime is to share couch space with me or Cole, and there he exudes contentment. Reclining lengthwise on a love seat in the living room, it has become an evening ritual for Goliath to warmly drape across one of us like some kind of comfortable quilt. All is right in the world for him as long as I run my fingers through his lush fur, and to be honest, when his comma-shaped nostrils flare and his soft cheeks puff with each snoring exhale, all is right in the world for me too.
More than any other member of the kennel, for the first year of his life Goliath spent almost the entirety of his days with us, and slept through the night at the foot of the mattress on the ground we called our bed. As he grew old enough to officially train by pulling in harness, it became clear—perhaps from being inseparable for months—that Goliath’s devotion to us was absolute. He displayed a strong sense of loyalty and an unwavering need to please.
Being one of the thickest-coated dogs in our kennel, he did struggle several times—mostly on hot days—as any marathon runner likely would if forced to exercise in a heavy parka. But Goliath never let himself fall behind the other dogs, never lost his will to continue pulling. He kept his tug line as tight as any of the other shorter-coated dogs.
The same held true as the runs got longer and more arduous, and he began to make the cut for several 200- to 300-mile races. He developed a self-assuredness about him, particularly when in lead. His niche seemed to be out front, exploring new trail, listening for commands to gee or haw. This confidence in him built incrementally with each run, and over the years it began to bleed into other areas of his personality, the culmination of which came when he finally cultivated enough courage to stand up to his lifelong bully.
It happened while Goliath intoxicatingly gnawed on a long femur bone from a moose, a treat we had given him after a hard day of running. Shagoo swaggered up and stared Goliath down expecting him to flee in fear as he always had done, but instead he locked eyes with her, curled a lip to bare his sharp white teeth, and emitted a guttural growl that even made the hair on my neck stand up. Shagoo read the message loud and clear: Goliath was no longer a little pup she could pick on, and they both knew it, from that day on.
