Bob CollinsNo more entries, please, we have a winner in the competition to see how many sleds sled dogs can pull. Ten.
This is how folks in northern Minnesota survive winter.
The Park Rapids Enterprise reports that on Sunday, Ed Streeper, of Osage, Minn., and a group of family and friends rigged up 20 dogs to 10 sleds. The wind chill was minus 21, shorts weather for some Minnesotans, in other words.
“The record that we could find is at six sleds, and we thought well, if we’re going to do seven, we might as well do 10,” Streeper tells the paper.
Plus, it’s January and what else are you going to do?
He’s been planning this for four years.
“The last three years, our winters have been kind of crazy and out of whack, and the weekends that were available, I didn’t have my crew. I couldn’t do it without all our good friends here that are going to ride the sleds,” he said.
The Enterprise says it took longer to hitch the dogs and sleds up than it did to run the three-quarter mile loop. The team stretched for 165 feet, but nobody fell off and the dogs seemed cool with everything.
Streeper — apparently known as “Fast Eddy” — is ready to be challenged.
“There’s some people in Canada that might challenge it. There’s some guys over in Sweden and Norway, countries that are going to want to counteract us,” he said. Though, he wasn’t too concerned. “I hope this lasts for maybe a long time. I always thought no sense setting a record if it doesn’t hold very long … Good luck to anybody who’s going to challenge us.”
