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If knowing your weaknesses makes you an expert, then I am an expert with dogs. My weaknesses lie in my inability to rehabilitate two types of dogs: aggressive dogs and sled dogs that don’t pull. Oh, I know the tricks of the trade, from treats to shock collars, but they just don’t work for me. Give me a spooky dog and I might get somewhere, but a dog that’s a fighter or lazy won’t last long in our dog yard.

That, combined with the bush work we ask our dogs to do, could explain why less than half of the dogs that we pick up from other mushers actually make it in our team. Pony is a case in point. He is a small dog, but worked in a trapline team so we hoped he would fit in. We did tweak a few things, starting with his name. Our dogs knew that a “Horse” lived in the corral and that saddling a Horse meant a pleasant outing. The white and light-gray Siberian mix was clearly not a Horse. He wasn’t big enough. So we renamed him Pony.

Pony was a super-nice dog, requiring only minor adjustments. He would not come when called, but soon learned that “Here!” meant “Snack!” which promptly rehabilitated that problem. He also didn’t respect me, and when let inside would rush to the nearest food and chow down regardless of my outraged shouts. Firm, consistent discipline straightened him out, with the bonus of making him worship me as a leader.

I soon grew quite fond of Pony and right about the time we decided that he wouldn’t work in our team, he grew increasingly fond of me. But he performed inconsistently, working hard one day and slacking off the next. I felt that with time he would improve, but after a long run in cold weather his feet fell apart, with deep red fissures between his toes. With dog food costing $60 a bag here in the Bush, the two strikes knocked him out. He’s now back in Fairbanks on a trial run in a recreational team.

Some years ago another Fairbanks musher offered us two dogs from the Forsberg line that we had long coveted. We told him we’d take them on a trial basis, but they arrived in early April, giving us just two weeks of snow to test them. Lou was 20 pounds overweight and couldn’t pull at all, and we sent him home rather than keep an older dog over the summer without knowing whether he would ever be fast enough for our team.

Anja, though small, worked well but developed a hatred of our favorite female, Iris. After she scarred Iris’ eyelid we kept the two separated as much as possible, but it wasn’t always easy. Later Anja developed a tumor and went back to Fairbanks where medical treatment was available. She probably would not count among our many failures.

One of most disastrous failures came in the form of a beautiful non-starter named Squirrel and her kennel mate, a gorgeous and extremely aggressive dog named — I kid you not — Monster. The dogs arrived in early September and Squirrel immediately came in heat. As she had too much Great Pyrenees for us to breed, Miki flew her directly back to Fairbanks for spaying while I began working on Monster.

Because of his aggression we dared not turn him loose, but he was so out of shape that I took him out harnessed to a light load and walked him for a mile every other day, working up to four miles. I spent hours with him, and because of that we bonded nicely. After a few months, every time I was outside he watched me adoringly.

Despite the time I spent conditioning him, he wasn’t ready to go trapping with the other dogs so I worked hard with him at home in a very small team. Once Squirrel recovered from her surgery, I often took just the two out with a small sled and we enjoyed many short runs together. Squirrel proved an indifferent worker, and though I hoped she would improve, she never did show any drive.

Meanwhile Monster was chewing his way though our dog yard. If he came near any male, intact or neutered, he would attack without preamble, and his size made him a formidable foe. He needed no provocation, only proximity, and his pathological coldness was sickening. It was that rare situation where I wished I had a cattle prod or a Taser, something to knock him out cold to protect his innocent victims. In late November we shipped him to our vet, at great expense, to have him neutered, but that did not help. We considered having his murderous canine teeth removed, but in the end we sent both him and Squirrel back to their original owner.

Squirrel might never turn into a good sled dog, but I really felt we had failed Monster. Some dogs are truly incorrigible, but my weakness in treating aggressive dogs might have been the deciding factor. Still, with a bunch of pups reaching adolescence, keeping a monster might have taught a whole generation of our dogs to fight.

Candle was something of an embarrassment for us. He came from John Schandelmeier, a distance racer admired for his ability to rehabilitate dogs and shape castaways into competitive teams. Candle was ridiculously small for our team, but we were so short of dogs I decided to give him a try. John sounded skeptical when I told him many of the dogs we tried didn’t work, but maybe he sometimes expects too much of mushers who are less gifted with problem dogs.

Candle’s big problem was that he simply didn’t work well, having been trained to pull gently to pace himself for long-distance racing. He also didn’t lead in our team, although he would lead for John. He was used to being a big dog at home, but in our dog yard he was the tiniest and his habit of grabbing loose dogs racing through the yard started a couple of nasty fights when he bit too hard.

We soon gentled Candle of his spookiness, but we could not make him pull, and by spring he was back home with John.

We’ve tried a number of distance-race dogs and while they never get tired, the whole race attitude doesn’t click well with our laid-back trapline dogs. Noisy Crunch is forever trying to run off with the team, but as a big dog and consistent worker, he has been with us for years now. Beagle worked furiously and might have made the team despite his excitability, but on our rough trails he couldn’t keep up and even got dragged.

Due to our remoteness we sometimes acquire dogs without the chance to see them first, which compounds the problem. We got Denali sight unseen; he was too hairy and too slow, so he went home. Doma came sight unseen, and promptly left again, being half as big as advertised, obese, and far from the breeding quality we had hoped for. We got Mike and Guy sight unseen. Guy, a leader, did not lead or pull. Mike, a wheel dog, was terrified of the sled. Guy went to a tourist kennel where sweet, well-trained, non-working dogs are invaluable, but we kept Mike for several years.

Of course we do have some successes. We tamed Loki and Legs, who were wild, and Sky, who was shy. Merlin was aggressive, but young, and neutering fixed that; training with treats improved his reluctance to leave the yard. Tonka was too slow, but his father Sunny was a fantastic dog after we toned down his aloof, independent attitude.

I mushed across the lake the other day to send Pony on the mail plane to his new home, then turned back to the four dogs remaining by my sled. “We’re failures!” I told them, and we cheerfully mushed home, wondering how the next new dog would work.