Working vacation: Yukon vet follows passion to European dog sled race
'I sort of jumped on the opportunity to see a different style of mushing,' says Jessica Heath
Jessica Heath is no stranger to dog sled races — the Yukon veterinarian has tended the needs of dogs running the Yukon Quest, for several years.
"I'm pretty crazy about dogs. I've had people un-friend me on Instagram because they've said they can't handle the volume of dog pictures!" Heath said.
Now she's bringing her professional skills to a new race, in a very different environment — la Grande Odyssée Savoie Mont Blanc, in the French Alps. The 11-day, 670 kilometre race began Saturday.
"I sort of jumped on the opportunity to see a different style of mushing and a different way of taking care of dogs," she said.
"Most of the vets in the Yukon Quest are from North America … this will be really neat, to be working with a bunch of European veterinarians."
Unlike the Yukon Quest, with its single starting time for all teams, la Grande Odyssée is a staged race with mushers starting and finishing different legs of the race on different days ("sort of like the Tour de France of mushing").
It also travels through more mountainous terrain, with mushers carrying mandatory avalanche transceivers along the way.
She expects to deal with some typical sled dog ailments, such as diarrhea, stomach ulcers, lameness or pneumonia.
But Heath says being a vet for a dog sled race is usually "an opportunity to be around dogs that are feeling pretty good," compared to her clinical work, where she's more likely to see sick or seriously injured animals.
"This is kind of like a vacation, where you're hanging out with a bunch of dogs that are having a good time ... I wouldn't want to do this if I felt like the dogs weren't happy."
