Clarence rushed to my side, scanning my face anxiously as I sneezed a second time. “You OK?” his worried dark brown eyes asked. I laughed at him. “I’m OK,” I assured my companion inside the tiny trapping cabin. “Just allergies.” The big dog, for years my main leader, was a deeply loyal worrier. A sneeze, a problem in the team, or a demanding trail situation all triggered his strong desire to please. His immense fluffy-white chest on a silvery-gray backdrop hinted at his power, while his loyalty and concern for me proved both a blessing and occasionally a problem. As a youngster, Clarence often greeted me with an enthusiasm that nearly knocked me to the ground, while in lead he could hardly restrain himself from turning back to greet me every time I walked up the line. Julie named him after one of the first non-native trappers in our area shortly after his birth in 2002, when he looked more like a fat marmot than a puppy. “Clarence Boatman,” she declared.
Weighing ninety-three pounds at 10 months old, when Clarence visited the vet at age 6, he tipped their scales at 108 lean, rock-hard pounds. Adding him to the team felt like adding the power of two dogs. Yet his height—nearly 30 inches at the shoulder—allowed him to break trail through deep snow for miles. Those long legs also contributed to his magnificent floating trot, traveling up to 14 mph as if equipped with anti-gravity boots. Left indoors as a youngster, Clarence would spend the first few minutes careening around with blithe disregard as his back slammed into the underside of the kitchen table and his exuberant tail swept dishes cascading to the floor.
Many dogs of that size can’t keep up with our team, just as our 80-pounders can’t keep up with smaller, lightweight race dogs. Clarence not only kept up, but he also set the pace for my team. Instead of starting fast and finishing slowly, he maintained the same conservative but brisk pace all day. As a four-year-old in 2006, he accompanied us during our last significant expedition, breaking out a route through the mountains and, later, clipping along on a hard-packed trail, covering up to 60 miles in 24 hours. I well remember mushing on the final day of an extended trapline trip one darkening evening, Clarence in lead setting a good strong pace with his powerful trot, the rest of the team of relatives matching him stride for a smooth stride. This is the epitome, I thought. No trophies, no records, no recognition, just the team and me floating swiftly, powerfully, through the wilderness.
Clarence matured into the dog I wanted up front anytime the trail threw us a problem. Deep snow, pummeling wind, glassy ice, knee-deep water—if he knew I wanted him to go through it, through it he went. For years he was my go-to guy for opening and maintaining 50 to 80 miles of trapline trail. Knowing how much I frowned upon any dog grabbing a trapped animal, he powerfully dragged overexcited undisciplined youngster’s cleanly past.
I noticed that, especially after graduating to leader, Clarence frequently glanced back at me. This annoying trait usually indicates a dog is trying to communicate. (“Which way should I turn?” “Hey, you! My feet have snowballs!” “How far did you say we have to go today?” “Do you expect me to push through drifts up to my neck?” “I don’t like running beside Bozo here.”) But I couldn’t tell what Clarence expressed with his quick backward glances.
Eventually, the truth dawned on me. My big leader didn’t have a problem; he just wanted to ensure I was all right. “Everything OK back there, Boss? You ARE there, right? You don’t need anything from me? All righty, then!” Or, “Did you want to stop at this trap or go on by?” Or, “Don is misbehaving; could I discipline him for you?” Devoted to extremes, Clarence would do anything to stop a team if I was left behind. This dedication proved especially valuable once we started running Jiles’ three sons. Strong, hard-driving dogs, Tokelau, Fiji, and Jarvis hated standing still and, as youngsters, occasionally pulled the snow hook anchored in often-soft trails, taking off during one of my frequent halts to maintain traps.
Stopping a team proves a difficult proposition for a leader whose mates will happily mow him down if he falters. Leaving the sled to bait a trap once, I turned back to see my team had slipped away unseen. I spied the runaways a hundred yards on, balled up in a wad because unbidden, my big leader had doubled back, using his bulk and power to stop the runaways. Even if he couldn’t halt the team right away, Clarence almost always managed to stop them eventually to wait until I caught up. I remember once after age and arthritis slowed him back to a team dog, he looked back to meet my eye as the excited team dragged the sled, hook and all, on down the trail without me. He knew putting on the brakes was going be painful, but when I gently called, “Whoa, Clarence,” he eased back against his neckline enough to drag his mates to a halt. Always, his entire life, he cast those quick looks back at me. Even in the dog yard, no matter what I might be doing, his eyes followed me attentively. When we lost our best-ever companion dog to cancer, his were the eyes that never left me as I trudged about my chores with tear-streaked cheeks.
The pressure he put on himself did not always work to my advantage. When something went wrong, he often tried to take charge to fix the problem. If that failed, he occasionally blamed some other dog. Departing from home our dogs must respond to a left-or-right command just as they reach Mach 3 going down a short steep hill, 200 feet from the launch pad. Normally excelling at directional commands, for a while Clarence started inverting his “gee’s” with his “haw’s” and I finally smacked him because unexpectedly veering off on the wrong trail at that fork risked a serious crash. I thought he got the message, but dogs’ minds don’t always work the way you might think. The next time I repeated “Gee!” as he headed “Haw!” he promptly doubled back and attacked my wheel dog, a somewhat aggressive ex-race dog that occasionally disrupted the team. Clarence couldn’t handle disapproval; he displaced his frustration on poor Don since he couldn’t blame me.
I had told Julie that Clarence had one chance: the first time he attacked another dog, I would have him neutered. He lasted six years, but seeing him latch onto a dog 40 pounds smaller convinced me to fulfill that commitment. Fortunately, I had already gotten three pups from him who matured into some of my favorites, and in 2023, we added four great-great-grandkids, kind and gentle dogs all. (His grandson Beetle stopped the team when I broke my leg.) Clarence once led my team several hundred yards through foot-deep overflow with such forward momentum and quiet confidence that the youngsters behind followed right along. When spring runoff edged lake ice with a moat of water, he didn’t care whether it lay ankle deep or thigh deep; he plunged in to wade or swim out to the solid pack ice, dragging the team, however reluctant, behind. That courage nearly proved his undoing; Clarence came closer to drowning than any other dog we’ve had in nearly fifty years of mushing. On three occasions!
The first time, he crashed through two-foot-thick candle ice when traveling loose across spring ice. Needle-sharp candles pinched in around him until he could neither walk nor swim; instead, he struggled to crawl through dense shards sinking beneath him, eventually reaching shore while we watched, helpless to assist. We subsequently abandoned the river for the duration of break-up. That was the year the three siblings, with their matching gray masks and grossly mismatched sizes, chased bears from spring camp before joining us with three Icelandic horses for a five-week summer trek. They made an amusing trio, little Quigley, just-right Jiles, and massive Clarence, partnering up to send another intruding black bear into a rapid retreat when it approached the camp.
Fifty miles from home, two of our horses exited the scene on an unauthorized departure. With a lone remaining pack horse, we made a forty-mile detour in search of the runaway pair, marching for days dodging horse-eating bogs and crossing frigid glacial rivers. The one thing we never had to worry about was our loyal trio of dogs. They hovered nearby day and night until we finally trudged home with our solo horse. (The runaways eventually strolled in—five months later).
At age five, Clarence was just becoming his own leader when Julie mushed out to meet me at a trapline cabin fifteen miles from home, leaving our old dogs in the care of Susan, a visiting friend. Worn down from long runs farther out the trail, my dogs and I reveled in a rest day at the cabin, admiring sun-splashed clouds pushed by strong winds rolling like heavy surf over the Alaska Range. Julie took Jiles with a small team out a short sideline, and by her return, thirty to forty mph gusts rocked the surrounding spruce. Susan did not answer our 7:00 pm radio schedule. When she failed again at 9:00 pm, we raised one of our neighbors, living a 10-mile journey across the lake from home. Our house sitter visited them by snow machine but started home in the dark. We had cautioned her about extensive overflow and worried she’d lost the trail and become trapped in the slush. Now, she was hours overdue. When another neighbor attempted a search, overflow and a total whiteout driven by winds over 50 mph turned him back.
By 11:00 pm, we could wait no longer. With trees creaking and whipping, we started harnessing dogs for a midnight run home to try to locate our missing friend. Good old Pelly, experienced, reliable, unintimidated by the worst of conditions, was the apparent leader. But he needed a good partner to speed his age-slowed pace. Jiles had already run twelve tough miles, so I chose Clarence even though he was still fatigued from a strenuous week. His size and power would serve him well, pushing through wind-blown drifts, but I wondered about his lack of experience under such severe conditions.
When a gust of wind cracked the 15” trunk of towering spruce, threatening to topple it onto the sled and team, I mushed down onto the creek to finish hooking up in relative safety as Julie turned loose the remaining dogs. Moments later, the mighty team surged into a howling black maelstrom. They lost the trail during a mile-long wind-swept lake crossing. Staggering against the battering wind, I trudged back and forth, peering through a heavy wall of spindrift reflecting the beam of my powerful headlamp. Recovering the tracks, I had to scream to be heard over the roaring wind. As the team powered past me, I sprang back into the sled basket.
Pelly and Clarence stuck to that trail the rest of the blustery trip, feeling for it and somehow detecting the subtle difference between hardpacked trail and wind-packed drift. We didn’t break any speed records that night, but those two dogs, the old timer and the influential young leader, kept their lines tight and the team motivated, arriving home in just over two hours. After caring for our much-deserving critters, Julie and I fired up a spare snow machine to attempt a nighttime search, only to be forced back by lake winds so strong we could barely stand, with visibility often down to fifteen feet. Fortunately, just a few hours later Susan called to let us know that after losing the trail she’d waited for the gusts to die down before eventually walking downwind to safety on the far side of the lake.
We did not regret having made the midnight run home. Clarence and Pelly reaffirmed our confidence in them, and the younger dog set the standard that carried him through life. While we’ve had faster dogs, smarter dogs, and dogs with more stamina, over Clarence’s long reign the grand dog worked his way into my heart as my favorite all-around leader in nearly fifty years of mushing.
“What does quintessential mean?” our young nephew once asked.
The most ideal in every way, I told him.
“Clarence!” Richard exclaimed. “The quintessential leader!”
I couldn’t agree more.
Miki and Julie Collins are long-time freelance contributors to Mushing. They live in an off-grid cabin in rural Alaska with their team of trapline sled dogs.
