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As frost slowly formed on her eyelashes, Gabe Dunham checked on each member of her dog team at the Iditarod’s dog lot, just down the road from the race’s Burled Arch finish line. The dogs rest in individual crates stuffed with straw, a warm and cozy reprieve from the 1,000 miles of trail each played a part in navigating.
Their metabolisms are still on overdrive. Dunham said while the dogs wind down from the race, she feeds them what they would normally eat out on trail, including ground beef fat, pork shoulders and chicken.
“Every year the dogs kind of change up their idea of what I should be cooking them. You figure it out on the trail, you'll make something with a slight difference to it, and all of a sudden they just smash it,” Dunham explained. “They're like, ‘That was delicious.’ So you're like, okay we'll stay with delicious.”
A white box truck arrived and Alaska Airlines Chief Dispatcher, Rick Jabusch, hopped out of the front seat.
“How are you?” Dunham inquired.
“Cold!” Jabusch, who lives in Seattle, retorted without hesitation.
Wearing a custom “Dog Squad” safety vest, Jabusch said he first got involved with Iditarod logistics in 2003. These days, it's just him shuttling dog teams onto Alaska Airlines’ fleet of cargo jets.
“I come up every year. Used to be a whole group of us was called the ‘dog squad’,” Jabusch said. “Used to be like 15, 20 of us. Back in the day we were at the Mini, had a booth and we were selling T-shirts and all sorts of other memorabilia and stuff to supplement us, being that we were all volunteers.”
Transportation costs aren’t included in the Iditarod’s standard $4,000 entry fee. So mushers like Dunham pick from a handful of options like Northern Air Cargo or Lynden. This year, she went with Alaska Airlines because the rate was just $500.
“I was shocked to hear that it was only $500 to fly everybody home,” Dunham said. “Backhaul rate is always cheaper anyways, right, but to give you an idea, it cost me $500 just to ship empty crates up here.”
One by one, the dogs are removed from their crates and the straw inside dumped out. It’s a fire hazard, Jabusch explained.
The empty crates are zip-tied and loaded into the back of the box truck, then refilled with a dog. The process, aided by Iditarod veteran Rachael Scdoris, is repeated until all 11 of Dunham’s dogs were aboard.
The dogs went on a short drive to the Nome Airport where a giant metal pallet awaited. Each crate, as tediously as they were loaded, was carefully unloaded and placed on the pallet then covered with a giant net to prevent the crates from moving in flight.
“They're pretty well traveled. This team's gone to Bethel a number of times for the Kusko 300, they've been here in Nome a couple times,” Dunham said. “Most of them just sit in their crates and be quiet and calm down and no problem, they'll sleep all the way to Anchorage.”
From there, some friends will pick up and drive Dunham’s dogs back to their home in Willow. In the meantime, Dunham planned to wait for the rest of the field to make it to Nome. Nine mushers further back on the trail opted to overnight in White Mountain Thursday to wait out a storm, and were expected into Nome late Friday night.
The race culminates each year with the Finisher’s Banquet Sunday, a catered dinner with awards and speeches from each musher.
Dunham’s first time running the Iditarod came back in 2020, but she scratched out of Unalakleet, about two thirds of the way through the race. She came back in 2024 and successfully reached the Nome finish line, earning veteran status along the way. Dunham returned in 2025 but scratched after reaching the Eagle River checkpoint.
This was Dunham’s first Iditarod since her father died in January. She said he introduced her to the world of mushing at the Copper Basin 300, when she was eight or nine years old.
“Now they're all the ‘historical mushers’, right, Susan Butcher and Aliy Zirkle, Martin (Buser) and all those guys were there,” Dunham said. "I just remember meeting all of them and being like, wow, this is so cool. And I had so much fun."
Before his death, Dunham’s dad asked her to carry his ashes on the trail this year. Not to be spread, but to just go for one more sled dog ride together.
Dunham said she felt his presence on a dark night, when an especially-vibrant aurora lit up the sky. As she watched her dogs quietly trot on the trail ahead, her father's favorite song, “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins started playing through her headphones.
“I think that was just like a really great experience in the moment. And it may have just been coincidental, but I feel like it was more spiritual that his song came on, and then as soon as that happened, the northern lights just blew up like that,” Dunham recalled. “I just said, ‘Thank you, Dad.' And it was just a lot of peace and love and gratefulness.”
Dunham admitted she didn’t get to spend as much time prepping for this year’s race as she would’ve liked, choosing to instead spend as much time with her father as possible. From the start, her goal was simply to finish, and make good on that promise to bring him along for the ride.
