Billy Snodgrass, a competitive dog musher from Dubois, Wyo., visited BYU-Idaho Nov. 9 and spoke to students about his experiences.

He got into the business of dog sledding when he was snowed in at his ranch. He hooked up his three dogs to his sled and packed his things into his cabin.

Now Snodgrass has 240 sled dogs with names like Nitro, Pilot, Deputy, Gravel, Dirt and Old Katie. “The athleticism in these dogs—no animal can match,” Snodgrass said.

His first competition was the Race to the Sky, a 350-mile race in Montana, and then competed in 25 other races including the “Race to Immunize,” in which he crossed the continental divide three times before he ran the grueling Iditarod race in Alaska.

He trains his dogs in the off season by “hooking the dogs up to the 4-wheeler. Then at the race when they’re pulling the sled, they don’t even know I’m back there because they’re used to pulling a 600-pound 4-wheeler, ” Snodgrass said.

The Iditarod, also called the “Last Great Race on Earth,” is a grueling 1,200-mile race. The low temperatures can drop to negative 40 degrees.

Snodgrass related the saying “All the cold in the universe sets on the Ucon River”.

“No one likes being cold,” Snodgrass said, so he does everything he can to stay warm. He bundles up in beaver mitts and hand warmers, foam clothing, a down coat, a parka coat, a wind-breaker called Anorak and military bunny boots.

“[Once in the race] the dogs started swerving side to side so I stopped them to find out what was wrong and their eyes had frozen shut, and when I blinked my eyes froze shut from the moisture,” Snodgrass said.

The line of dogs reaches out 72 feet past the two-foot long sled. Snodgrass trusts his dogs to follow the trail when he can’t see that far ahead.

“Dogs have amazing memories about a few things, and they remember trails and direction,” he said.

It takes Snodgrass and his team 11 days to race Iditarod. He raced Iditarod twice. On his second run he finished 37 out of 91 teams.

Even his daughter, Maddie, has taken up dog sledding. When Maddie was only seven years old she raced the American Dog Derby, came in first and won $100.