FOUR THOUSAND PAWS

A veterinarian narrates his experiences volunteering his services for the Iditarod.

When Morgan applied to help with the sled dogs of the Iditarod—the 1,049-mile Alaskan race the author calls “the hardest endurance event in the world”—he wasn’t sure that his experience running a veterinary practice in Washington, D.C., and treating professional animals like seeing-eye dogs and police dogs would be enough to qualify him for the coveted position. To his surprise (and delight), Morgan was chosen, and he set off for his first Iditarod in 2012. Over the ensuing years, Morgan became a regular volunteer whose empathy and curiosity made him an expert in a variety of trivia, including the evolution of Alaskan huskies, their establishment as the official Iditarod race dogs (which followed one competitor’s disastrous attempt to race with a team of standard poodles), and the personal histories of mushers like Newton Marshall, one of the race’s only Caribbean competitors. Morgan doesn’t shield readers from the most intense parts of the race. He describes surviving a tent fire and poignantly remembers the aftermath of a brutal attack on two mushers that killed a sled dog. While the narrative has a few misses—e.g., the author seems overly awed by the participation of a group of incarcerated women charged with caring for injured dogs—he crafts a deeply researched, charmingly narrated, and intensely compassionate behind-the-scenes look at one of the most intense human-animal collaborations in modern history. Readers will leave with a huge appreciation for huskies, the landscape that bred them, and the humans who care for them. The author concludes, “Some say…that huskies shouldn’t be allowed to run with abandon through the wilderness…I know thousands of huskies who emphatically disagree.”

A captivating, fast-paced, eclectic memoir about animals and humans cooperating to accomplish extraordinary feats.