Strutt enjoying the dog days of winter

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This article was published 15/01/2021 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OAKLAND-WAWANESA— For the last 10 years, Westman resident Alyssa Strutt has been tearing up the trails of southern Manitoba with her team of four-legged friends, which has only grown in size throughout the decade.

Strutt told the Sun on Tuesday that her journey into the sport of mushing didn’t begin because of some long-standing family tradition that she felt obliged to continue. Instead, it stemmed from her own natural love of dogs and the great outdoors, which she decided to combine in around 2010 by attaching her border collie and husky to a kicksled.

“They loved it,” Strutt recalls. “My border collie mix pulled on the leash all the time. She wanted to go and it didn’t really matter where she was going. She just wanted to run.”

This enthusiasm was on full display Wednesday afternoon when Strutt invited the Sun to watch her current dog sledding team in action outside her home located near the Municipality of Oakland-Wawanesa.

Unlike the uniform dog sledding teams prominently featured in movies and television, Strutt’s current six-canine squad consists of various breeds, from a French Brittany to a lab pointer.

However, with Strutt at the helm, this rag-tag group turned into a cohesive unit once they started moving, making sharp turns and reaching speeds of around 30 km/h.

While this level of skill and know-how has helped Strutt achieve success at different dog sled races within the province, she mostly treated mushing as a hobby at the beginning.

“For the first five years I wasn’t racing,” she said. “Doing this was just my regular winter activity. I would go along the river around Brandon or, after a big snowfall, some of the big walking paths and things like that.”

But with some encouragement from her partner Doug Nicholls, Strutt eventually started competing in mushing events in 2015, with her first big race taking place at Bird Hill Provincial Park.

“She was fast and she had full control of the dogs and it looked like a lot of fun,” Nicholls said. “And we liked the camaraderie of the group out in Winnipeg too. They seem to be really friendly and easy to get along with.”

From there, Strutt and Nicholls decided to branch out and take part in other races hosted by events like the Vita and Area Winter Festival, which usually attracts professional mushers from all over Canada and the northern United States.

“We hadn’t actually been to a 10-dog race before,” Strutt said. “So we got to see all the teams take off and hear all the deafening barking and the excitement.”

Based on this exposure, Strutt was driven more than ever to expand her team from two dogs to four, wanting to challenge herself with greater distances and larger gear.

Last year, her unit increased to six dogs, with Strutt looking to debut this new team at the 2021 Vita and Area Winter Festival.

Unfortunately, festival organizers announced on Jan. 7 that this year’s event can’t move forward due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, following in the footsteps of many other cancelled public sporting events within the province.

While Strutt is disappointed that she won’t get a chance to compete again this winter, she’s grateful that Manitoba’s broader dog sledding community is remaining supportive during such trying times.

“There’s a lot of mushers around Saint Malo … and they’ve been great to talk to on Facebook or to text,” she said on Wednesday. “And they’ve said ‘when this is all over, you can come out and train on our trails.’” 

However, dog sledding’s popularity in Westman is still pretty sparse, with Strutt estimating that there are only a few mushers scattered throughout the region outside of herself.

But if anyone is looking to pick up a new hobby under lockdown conditions, Strutt said all you really need to get started, outside of the necessary equipment, is a couple of dogs that weigh over 13 kilograms and the willingness to train them.

“It’s just doing the groundwork before you hook them up to a sled,” she said. “Taking them for walks in the harness and making it a fun experience for them. I mean, as long as the dog loves doing something, it’s not work.”

And while there are no dog sledding events to look forward to right now, Strutt said she’s going to continue hitting the trails with her team as much as possible, trying to stay sharp for whenever things are allowed to go back to normal.

Plus, this activity provides a nice sense of escape for Strutt, which could also come in handy for fellow Westman dog lovers who are looking for a nice distraction to ride out the first quarter of 2021.

“If people are already getting out, walking with their dogs, it’s kind of the next step,” she said.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun. com

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