PALMYRA TWP.: If anyone is ready for the snow and cold in Northeast Ohio, it is Shannon Mugrage Miller and her Alaskan huskies.
Many people know Miller as a 39-year-old photographer, videographer and writer who owns Shannon Miller Creative.
But Miller’s consuming passion is sled dog racing.
“Mushing is summed up best as like trying to hook 10 very strong, meat-eating, high-octane preschoolers to a line and expecting them to behave,” Miller said of her love of mushing, the name given to leading a team of sled dogs in a race.
“And believe it or not, this is one of my favorite things about mushing. Most days it is beautiful chaos.”
Miller, her husband, two daughters, 20 dogs, a dozen chickens and three cats live on seven acres in rural Portage County, a place she calls the Lazy Husky Ranch.
After she graduated from Akron’s Ellet High School in 1991, she attended the University of Akron, where she received an English degree with a minor in history. She was working on her master’s in English but was diverted to a place that changed the direction of her life.
She moved to Wyoming in 1997 to work at an Audubon Society Ecology Camp and met a woman who worked for Frank Teasley, an eight-time Iditarod racer.
“He had 180 dogs, and the interview was to go walk through the dog yard. That was it,” Miller said.
She said Teasley could tell from that walk that she had good chemistry with the dogs.
“He can read how well you deal with the dogs by walking through,” she said.
She was hired at Jackson Hole Iditarod Sled Dog Tours and moved to a one-room cabin and began taking care of the dogs. She soon found herself enchanted with sled dog racing.
“It was so addicting,” she said. “I swore that I would someday have my own team of dogs.”
She remained in Wyoming for a few years, then moved back to Ohio and finished her master’s at UA. She taught there and later worked as a health educator at Akron Children’s Hospital for seven years.
In 2005, she bought her first two Alaskan huskies, a hybrid with a base of northern breeds, Alaskan Inuit dog/Siberian husky, combined with other breeds.
Miller started racing re-creationally and took part in her first official race in 2009 at the Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race, a 28-mile course in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“I did horrible,” she said of her first race. Racing with six dogs, she finished 23rd out of 26 racers, covering the course in 3 hours, 43 minutes.
“It seemed like forever,” Miller said.
She met some friends from northern Michigan and began taking her dogs there several times a year for training. She still spends two weeks a month from October through December in Michigan training.
In February 2009 she raced in the Jack Pine 30 in Marquette, Mich., and finished in sixth place. She finished second at the Punderson Classic Sled Dog Race in Newbury, Ohio, in January 2010, then raced the Jack Pine again in February, finishing last.
She raced the Tahquamenon Country again in 2011, finishing eighth.
Because her mailing address is in Diamond, she calls where she keeps her dogs the Diamond Dogs Racing Kennel.
She practices with her team on the farmland where she lives by having them race with her riding a four-wheel Yamaha ATV.
The dogs cannot race in temperatures above 55 degrees, so they are trained in the cooler temperatures of autumn.
By the time she races in the new year, she hopes to have put 700 miles of training on the dogs.
Miller plans to again attempt the Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race, Jan. 7, but will take eight dogs on a 48-mile course.
She plans to race the 90-mile Midnight Run in Marquette in mid-February and possibly the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Duluth, Minn. — 125 miles on Jan. 29 — if she can get enough sponsors to defray her costs.
Her long-term goal is participating in the UP200, a 200-mile race in Marquette in 2013.
“I’ve always been an outdoors person,” said Miller, who once worked as a zookeeper at the Akron Zoo.
Being outdoors with the dogs is the best, she said.
“There is something really, really cool about watching them work,” she said. “They are such amazing athletes.”
Her husband, Chris Miller Jr., said that while dog sled racing is too cold for him, he can see how the sport is addicting and exhilarating to his wife.
“It takes a unique breed of person to enjoy being in the cold,” said Miller, director of the Akron Digital Media Center and a community investment officer for the Akron Community Foundation.
“She likes the culture of dog sledding. She has always been a determined person. It is overcoming obstacles. ... It has to be in your blood. The dog musher is such a unique person.”
Shannon Miller’s racing endeavors are expensive — the family spends $300 to $400 a month on dog food, and even more in training season — but it teaches her about dealing with adversity and other important life lessons, she said.
One such lesson is adaptation, she said, citing the way animals adjust to changes in temperature. Others are the importance of teamwork, leadership, following through and dedication.
Racing sled dogs also teaches calmness, because “losing your cool won’t get you out of a jam,” she said.
“Mushing is something that is in you,” she said. “You either get it, or you don’t; there’s no in between.”
There is also something wonderful about being outside in the cold winter months.
“People complain about winter, never venturing outside to see the amazing winter activities taking place every day, thereby shutting themselves off from a whole season of beauty,” she said.
Miller will put on a free sled dog demonstration at Akron’s Lock 3 Park in downtown Akron from 1 to 3 p.m. Dec. 17 and 18.
For information, go to www.diamonddogsracing.com, read her blog at www.diamond
dogsracing.blogspot.com, email her at lazyhuskyranch@yahoo.com or call her at 330-690-7900.
Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.