Honest Dogs

At forty-one, husband and father Brian Patrick O’Donoghue feels his youth slipping away… It had been since six years since the newspaper reporter mushed to a last-place finish in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Yearning to challenge himself anew, he enters the Yukon Quest—a far more brutal, 1,000-mile run through mountainous wilds along the Yukon River between Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Fairbanks, Alaska. With wry humor and diminishing expectations, O’Donoghue shares the trail with Khan, Hobbes, Scrimshaw, Cyclone, and ten other excitable Alaska huskies, plus a diverse collection of rival racers and an assortment of “Bush rats” met on his way to the finish line. The mushers’ strategies, dreams, and disappointments; the antics of their furry athletes; the drama of the race; and the unworldly winter wilderness venue add texture to this amazing personal story of a man and his dogs.

Author Biography

When he’s not cleaning the dog lot, Brian Patrick O’Donoghue covers the oil industry, politics, and sled dog racing for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. He and his wife, fellow journalist Kate Ripley, reside with their two boys and a dozen sled dogs in a cabin located on a forested 20-acre parcel in Two Rivers, Alaska’s mushing mecca. His last book, My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian recounted his misadventures in the Iditarod in 1991.