Musher

Jim is a musher.

Alaska holds an annual contest in which teams of 16 dogs pull sledges a distance of about 1,800 kilometres through tundra and forests, crossing rivers, hills and mountain passes. The sledge driver is often called a "musher"; the word comes from the French command "Marche!" In most years the winning musher is from Alaska, but a Swiss citizen has won the event four times, and a Norwegian has won twice.

Ned Cathers is a professional dog sled "musher" who's home on the edge of Lake Laberge is about an hour north of the small town of Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon Territory of Canada.

It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged forty miles. For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers.

The youngest musher to enter was Dallas Seavey, who ran in the 2005 Junior Iditarod at age 17, then turned 18 one day before the Iditarod and ran that race in the same year. […] Dallas Seavey was also the youngest musher to win, taking the 2012 championship at age 25.

A sled dog learns that by the time she's hungry, her musher has already prepared a meal; by the time she's tired, she has a warm bed.

Nobody knew Old Joe. He was a "musher"—that is to say, he owned his own cab and mostly did night work. He gave no trouble to anybody, and came and went as a rule in the dark hours of the night.