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Out of Bounds
Mush! Mush!
A man, his sled dogs
and fresh-fallen snow.
“Haw, haw. haw. Crick, haw
a little, Crickett,” the man
croons to his lead dog on an
eight-mile training run on
unploughed Forest Service roads
m the Cascades. The dog drifts
over to the right; gee means
right, haw means left
“Alta kid. atta kid " The
hacks of 12 dogs arch up and
down in a stream of gre\ and
black and white. Heavy, wet
snowflakes fly in their faces Rig
snow-covered ponderosa pines
slide by
The dogs arc trotting The
man whistles at them with the
low. quick whistles a cowboy
would use on a round-up. and
the dogs break into a bounding
lope. Alter a while he calls them
to a halt They crane their heads
around and look at him good
naturedly. The sound of 12 pan
ting dogs fills the silence. The
snowstorm has drained the color
out of the landscape and the only
color is the pink tongues hanging
far out of their mouths The dogs
are tired. After a moment, he
whistles them on again and they
enthusiastically bound ahead.
Alaska, Minnesota. Michigan.
Sled dog racers are born and
raised in those bastions of snow.
But dogsled champion Jerry
Klatt of Sisters — a small town
near Bend learned to dogsled
in Southern California, togging
behind his first husky in the
streets of Riverside at night
Klatt had read about dogsled
ding in books. Twenty-one \ears
ago. his girlfriend’s piano-tunei
sold him a husky pupp\. Russia,
and he harnessed her. hooked
her up to 10 feet of rope and
taught her the commands a lead
sled dog needs to know
“She was the only dog I had.
so she had to Iv the lead dog.”
iic sa vs, cnuckimg.
A friend of his who ran an
AK( Siberian husk> kennel in
Riverside gave him some tips on
training The friend also in
spired Klatt with a night ride in a
stripped down eai frame pulled
by lb sled dogs. "Oh, it was
wild." Klatt remembers.
However. Russia wasn’t his
only dog for long. Tonka came
from the dog-pound "and |ust
happened to be a husky."
He hooked the two dogs up to
a line attaehed to a bicycle
frame. "I was going to pedal,
but as soon as I said ‘go’ there
was no pedalling, they went!”
he says.
Klatt worked for a humane
soeiety in Riverside for 14 mon
ths. It left him w ith a soft spot in
his heart the size of a football
field tor dogs that were to be put
to sleep Nino was one of those
dogs.
Nino had been the mascot for
the Riverside High School foot
ball team — the Huskies
before Klatt adopted him.
"Once he got loose you couldn’t
catch him. He’d been tackled by
football players, so he was reallv
Photo by Laurie Schwartz
Besides having won a number of dogsledding championships,
Jerry klatt of Sisters, Oregon also has received two best
conditioned team awards, klatt and his team race six to eight
times a year.
good at evasive action,” klatt
sa\s. “But 1 liked him, he was a
good hoy. He went on to become
my leader. ”
klatt has always liked
animals His parents bought a
small ranch in Riverside when
he was a teen ager He liked
working with the stock and
learned about training horses.
Unlike people, animals are
consistent, he says. ”1! an
animal is mean and ornery, he’s
mean and ornerv all the time.”
One summer klatt and his
wife took a vacation and went to
Sisters. They liked it so much
they stayed there, bought a small
ranch, some catttle and horses,
klatt got a job with the Forest
Service as a heavy equipment
operator, and the slow construc
tion season left him w ith time to
devote to running the dogs — on
real snow.
I he dogs have to like to run.
That's one of the requirements,
he says He believes in interval
training and started using it long
before there was a name for it
Start with the right dogs, breed
them right, feed them right,
train them right and. if you're
lucky, you go to races and you
win. klatt says.
In the 2()-odd years klatt has
been involved in the sport, he
has racked up some impressive
wins: Western Canadian
A m c r i c a n c h a m p i o n s h i p,
Oregon Championship, Califor
nia Championship, Pacific Coast
Championship. He has raced
against the top racers in the
world.
Klatt has raced everywhere
form Montana, to Colorado, to
C alifornia. He loads his dogs in
to a I ton pickup, each dog in its
own cubicle in a home-built
camper built onto the back of the
pick-up. There’s a long narrow
space for Klatt to sleep, too.
You have to like doing it. he
says I he days of glory come
only about eight to lb days out
of the year. The races are divid
ed into classifications of three
dog, five-dog and seven-dog
teams, and an open class where
the number of dogs on the team
is left up to the driver. Klatt
prefers the open class races and
usually runs 12 dogs.
The typical race in the open
class is anywhere from eight to
30 miles, although longer races
are now becoming popular. The
starts are staggered. The dog
races are on a machine-groomed
track 6 to 8 feet wide, and
sometimes there’s a little trouble
when one team passes another.
“One time a dog started to go
for for my dog. and I slapped
him in the face with a mitten,”
Klatt says.
Continued on Page 12