I chose the musher Wade Mars to follow in the Iditarod. He loves his dogs a lot. He is one of those people with a beard. He needs glasses to see. I chose Wade Mars because I liked his last name Mars.
I read Silver during the Iditarod. It takes place in a nice place. It is snowy. The girl is the main character. She is nice to her dog Silver. Silver was a cute puppy. Silver ran away, and the girl found him.
I read another book that was nonfiction. It was about the Junior Iditarod. Dusty wanted to do the race. He got teased by his friends. He got ready by packing a lot. Tons of dogs loved him. At the start, they ran into caribou. They were about to hit a moose, and he was afraid for the dogs, but the dogs did a half circle around it. At the end, he won a trophy with $1,000 and two plane tickets to Nome to see the winners of the adult Iditarod.
I learned a lot about mushing. The dogs are wanting to mush. The huskies sometimes walk and sometimes run. They work a lot at night. Aliy was in the lead sometimes, and she pets her dogs. The dogs like to yip, yap, and bark. They are famous for running a lot of miles. I like their curly tails. They are well-trained.
I made a list of strong Iditarod verbs to use in my writing. I chose yip, mush, slide, whoosh, jump, steer, bump, blow, bark, and care.
I compared mushing to a sport I like, karate. Mushing is different because you run a long time, there is running and riding, there are straight trails, and you are alone competing. Karate is different because it is usually short, there are defense moves, you do laps, and there are teams. They are similar because you have to be in good shape for both, and they are both exciting.
I liked the videos on the Iditarod website. They helped me by getting me to understand what the dogs liked to do at the rest time. I saw them being fed a type of meat, maybe moose or salmon. They took a nice nap on the straw. The musher would take off the booties, rub their feet with lotion, and put new booties on.
