Honest Dogs, by Brian Patrick O’Donaghue

It had been six years since newspaper reporter Brian Patrick O’Donoghue mushed to a last place finish in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Yearning to challenge himself anew, he enters the Yukon Quest, a more brutal 1,000-mile run 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 resident bush rats. The mushers’ strategies, dreams and disappointments, the antics of the dogs, and the drama of the race are all part of Honest Dogs (336 pages), a testament to this punishing personal journey.

“If you’ve got spirit and the love of life, this book will make you want to recruit a bunch of canine buddies and join the strange characters who still roam the trails of Jack London’s Great White Silence.”
    –Craig Medred, Anchorage Daily News

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.

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