A musher and former teacher from Carlton Comprehensive High School has found a new way to give back.
Nancy Dragan, a former Carlton basketball coach, has developed a dog retirement home at Risky Trail Kennel near Christopher Lake. The kennel is currently home to 10 dogs and features a dog yard, trails and other amenities for retired Alaskan Huskies.
“I still run my dogs, but my yard is geriatric right now,” Dragan said. “There are only 10 dogs in there and they’re all older. I’ve got a memorial board out there. You will see how many dogs that I have had and lost, but they all live to good old ages. I’m not trained as being an animal therapist by any means, but I’ve had lots of background in it.”
Dragan taught at Carlton for 31 years after beginning her career in Cut Knife. She came to Carlton in 1984 and retired in 2012. She was most prominent as the basketball coach, she also taught Phys Ed and English and coached other sports.
She also discovered a love for sled dog racing.
“I watched the first Canadian Challenge sled dog race and I don’t remember what year that was,” Dragan said. “It would have been probably 1997 somewhere and there was a 20-year-old girl from Montana running and a 55-year-old grandma running who I thought was super old at the time. Now, to me, that would be young. I said, ‘I’m going to do this’ and that’s kind of how I started.”
She then became a sled dog racer herself in 1998-1999, running in every race she could, whether sprints or long distances.
“I competed, but I would say it was more recreational,” she said.
She also developed the Pet Therapy program at Carlton where she would take dogs and students to the Mont. St. Joseph Home until she retired. This also extended into schools and a grief camp called Healing Hurting Hearts, which she does to this day.
Last season she was honoured at a Prince Albert Raiders’ game for her work with the program. She is most proud of her continued involvement in the grief camp, which is run by the Boreal Healthcare Foundation.
“I took one pet therapy course with St. John’s, but I was using all my dogs. I would take sometimes 10 dogs at a time,” she said.
For Dragan, the dog therapy program was like an extension of her time as a teacher. She retired from teaching in 2012 and competed in her last race in 2013 in Torch River.
A bad accident on Christmas Day 2001 damaged her knees, an injury that eventually forced her to retire and get knee surgery.
Although that ended her time as a musher, she continued to work with dogs. She now has a small kennel with 10 Alaskan Huskies and has not been on a sled for a year. Instead, she has tracks on her quad so she can run the dogs in the winter to be safer.
“I have miles and miles of trail,” she said. “I was lucky enough to buy a place that had access to trails, and then I was able to buy the neighbour’s land.
“I still really enjoy dog care and I really enjoy caring for geriatric dogs,” she added.
“I get quite a few dogs from Alaska from a professional musher when she wants her old dogs to (retire.”
Dragan said that she has had dogs at her kennel that have run five Iditarods. Currently, she also has two dogs from the Yukon.
“They need a lot of extra care too and I do give them that,” Dragan said. “I keep them going for a long time because they deserve it.”
With her bad knees, she sees a direct line between herself and the dogs in her care.
“We keep active and that’s what keeps us going and joyful,” she said.
She has been living on the property near Christopher Lake since she retired.
The dogs come from people who want to retire their dogs including old connections from when she was a musher.
“It just came together,” she said. “It was amazing. You know how they say the universe reaches out.
“Once in a while, I’ll take a young dog that needs a home, and then over the years, I did rescue dogs that people phoned me about—Huskies that had been dumped and I’ve taken some of them.”
Another example was a neighbour who passed away and had dogs. She does not describe herself as a rescuer.
She also has a geriatric dog shelter with a heater, heat lamp and examination table. During the winter she also turns her shop into a place for the dogs since it has a heated floor.
“I didn’t always have that, so I have old dogs in there in the winter too,” Dragan said.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
