So he did what mushers did in those days — he gave the puppy away as a house pet to a woman in town. Some woman wants a small dog, he reasoned. This one will do.
But Togo had other plans.
He escaped his new home almost immediately. He smashed through a window. He ran the long miles back to Seppala’s kennel through the snow. He sat outside the gate until they let him in. Seppala, defeated, took him back.
Togo grew up causing trouble. He nipped at the lead dogs. He tugged on traces. He picked fights. He was, in Seppala’s exhausted words, a holy terror.
Then one day, when Togo was eight months old, Seppala tried something different. He put the misbehaving puppy in a harness and added him to the sled team — just to see what would happen.
By the end of that first day, Togo had run 75 miles. By nightfall, Seppala had moved him from the back of the team to share the lead position with the lead dog.
Seppala stared at the small, scrappy puppy panting in the snow and said, quietly, the words that would change both their lives:
