I heard on the radio the other day that it snowed at least a little bit EVERY DAY IN JANUARY. And February is starting out pretty much the same way. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a winter with this much snow. Everyone is grumbling about it.
That is, everyone except Village of Webster resident Devin Englerth.
Devin has a hobby that helps her glide through winter (literally) with a smile. Devin is a dogsledder, and when there’s this much snow, it means there are a lot more opportunities to take her dogsled, seven huskies and big black shepherd out for a run. And every once in a while, when the conditions are right, she doesn’t bother going very far to do so.
A few weeks ago, the conditions were perfect, so instead of packing up her dogs and heading to her usual sledding spot far on the west side of town, she hooked them all up and took them out on the streets of the village.
Perhaps you saw them that day. A lot of people did, and photos popped up all over Facebook from village residents surprised and delighted to see an actual dogsled speeding down their street. ‘Cause that’s not something you see every day.
I sat down the other day with Devin (and her dogs) to find out more about her history with the sport, both in the village and elsewhere.
Devin has been dogsledding since 2011, ever since she got her first husky. Not long afterwards, she joined the Seneca Siberian Husky Club, and tries to get out and run the dogs at least a couple times of year. That’s been difficult in recent years when lack of snow has made for poor conditions.
“You have to have a frozen base and the snow on top of it,” she explained. “If you go before it freezes my sled would sink in the slush.”
But not running makes for unhappy huskies.
“(Running) is all they want to do,” Devin said. Even when she goes out to fire up the snow blower they start getting excited, thinking they’re going to get out and go. And when she is able to finally hook them up out in a wide open space, they might be out there for two and a half hours.
The day she decided to run them in the village, “they were going crazy,” she said. They hadn’t been sledding in a long time, and the conditions were good, so “we went all over the east side of the village.”
It proved to be rather challenging. People were coming out to take photos, the dogs kept stopping to say hi to the neighbors, even deciding to go up a driveway or two. So they got tangled up a lot. But despite the distractions, they were out on the streets for more than an hour.
It wasn’t the first time Devin has dogsledded through the village, and it probably won’t be the last. Because sled dogs live to run.
(Thank you to Jessica Cataldi for this great blog idea, and to Stretch Sabin for these videos!)
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(posted 2/3/2025)
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