Michigan Dreaming Bucket List: Chill with sled dogs in the heat of summer

• MI Dog is a UP business run by musher Laura Neese that allows the public to hang out with sled dogs in the offseason
• It was voted No. 8 on the Bridge Michigan summer bucket list
• Visitors cuddle puppies, hear stories from the trail and learn about the unique sport 

NEWBERRY — Laura Neese walked out of a gated pen holding two puppies, each 20 days old.
“Just babies,” she said in a sing-song voice, bending down to kiss their foreheads. 

At that very moment, one of them started peeing.

“You gotta go, you gotta go!” Neese said with a laugh, carrying the puppies over to a group of about a dozen people who had signed up to see the dogs.

This is MI Dog, a Newberry business started by Neese in 2022 as a place where the public can visit sled dogs — and future sled dogs — and learn about the sport in the offseason. In addition to the puppy-holding session that kicks off the tour, Neese introduces visitors to her current sled dog team and tells stories about her experience mushing for more than a decade. 

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Visiting the sled dogs ranked eighth on Bridge Michigan’s reader-voted Michigan Dreaming Ultimate Summer Bucket List.

During a recent tour, there were 39 dogs staying at the facility, most of them Alaskan huskies. Some dogs, like the peeing puppy, were brought there temporarily by their owners in hopes that regular petting sessions will help socialize them. Twenty-four dogs were on Neese’s current sled team, and a few more on the premises were retired.

“In 2018, I had the idea for the business, and it was really just thinking of how I could start a business to earn an income without leaving the dogs,” Neese said.

Sled dog racing is expensive. Neese estimates she spends $15,000 a year on dog food alone and doing a race can cost $50,000. MI Dog allows her to raise money, stay with her dogs and teach people about her passion. 

“Very few people know anything about sled dogs, and it's too awesome of a sport not to share,” she said.

Remote and cold

Neese has competed in Michigan races like the Jack Pine 30 and the UP200, and long-distance races like the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, which can each take as long as two weeks to finish. 

The Iditarod has name recognition with the masses, but Neese said the Yukon Quest, in which she once placed third, is tougher. Both are about 1,000 miles and traverse parts of Alaska (the Yukon Quest goes into Canada, as well) but Neese said the Yukon Quest, which she prefers, crosses more challenging terrain, has fewer checkpoints and takes place earlier in the year, when it’s colder.

When she raced it in 2018, she said there was a four-day stretch in which temperatures ranged from 40 below zero to 60 below zero. In the freezing temps, her team raced wonderfully, she said, like a freight train, but “as the human, that's cold. You can put as many layers on as you want, once you hit 40 below, it's not really comfortable.”

Still, Neese reveled in the remoteness of the journey. She once went 48 hours without seeing another human on the trail.

“That's one of the reasons I loved that race so much, because there were so few distractions. That's where the relationship between dog and human got even stronger,” she said.

Neese said that race, because of the cold, is her favorite one she’s ever done, “because the feeling of accomplishment was that much greater once we crossed the finish line.” 

Journey to the UP

Neese grew up in Ohio and became smitten with sled dog racing at the age of 9, when she watched the Iditarod online as part of a homeschool project.
“I always loved dogs in winter. So watching the race, I just fell in love with it,” she said. “Decided pretty quick that that’s what I was going to do.”

By age 14, she had convinced her dad to buy her her first sled dog. A few months later, she heard about someone who was selling off all of their sled dogs, she learned to breed, and, within the year, she had acquired 18 dogs, enough to run a sled.

At 15, she competed in her first race, a 20-miler in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. 

But it was the Jack Pine 30, an Upper Peninsula race that she did in 2013 at age 16, that had her falling in love with the state. When she turned 18, Neese moved to the UP to work for a kennel and start racing their team. By 19, she competed in her first long-distance race, the Yukon Quest.

A few years later, she saw 28 acres up for sale about a 10-minute drive from Tahquamenon Falls. Neese knew she had to find a way to get the land. She took out loans from friends and family to buy the property and spent two years building it up before opening MI Dog in 2022.

‘Fluffy potatoes’

Neese lives onsite in a camper and is the only full-time staffer, though volunteers come and help. 

Cyndy Rastovski is a retiree who came up from Indiana to volunteer for two weeks at MI Dog. She met Neese in 2017 when Rastovski, a husky owner and fan of the sport, bid to ride in a sled as part of a ceremonial start to the Iditarod.
“So I had to decide who I was going to bid on, because I think there were 63 mushers in 2017 during this particular race,” Rastovski recalled. “I wanted a gal, I wanted a rookie, and then I read Laura’s bio and it’s like ‘bid, bid, higher higher!’” 

Her bid was successful and they remained friends. 

Rastovski called MI Dog a “dog paradise” and said she’s blown away by Neese’s relationship with her dogs, the respect she gets from them.

During the tour, Neese picks up grown dogs and they flop in her arms like a slice of New York pizza.

The special bond is visible to visitors like Xinping Fang from Princetown, New Jersey, who stopped into MI Dog on a trip with his daughter. He was impressed with how Neese communicated with the dogs. 

“She talks with dogs almost like a real friend,” he said.

Other visitors, like young Owen Henneberry of Mount Clemens, were more taken with the dogs themselves, particularly the puppy petting.

“When they are babies, they're tiny and their heads are big. So it looks funny and they are cute because they're really fluffy. They look like fluffy potatoes,” said Henneberry. 

Neese runs five tours a day. In peak season, in July and August, 100 to 180 people come through every day. 

“I think the hardest part is being an introvert and talking all day,” she said. “But the only thing that makes that hard is feeling tired at the end of the day. All throughout the day, I'm having fun, it's a blast to share the sport, and I love seeing people leave so happy.”