Loki

Sponsored by the Doggie Farm

‘You’re going to love Loki, and Loki is going to love you,’ Denis said when Loki came home with me after leaving their home in Quebec, where I had been training for the past few days. Loki had been training in Denis’ Yukon Quest team pool, but when they dropped their second race team when their handler had to leave due to family emergency, they looked long and hard at their dogs and realized they had to cut down on numbers. While Denis almost made the bad decision of selling me Loki’s brother and his main leader Belzebuth, I had joked about Loki coming home with me, and thus….Loki came home with me.

Loki is a big, fuzzy, ball of love. Like all of Julie and Denis’ dogs, he is great loose and listens well. Loki has one of the largest appetites of the dogs, and like his relatives Oriana and Fanzine, holds his weight well in long races. In the team, Loki is a steady constant and one of the hardest working dogs, and I’ve run him everywhere from the back to to the front end of the team and he is exactly the same wherever he is. Loki doesn’t put as much on the line when the speed is high, as his preferred gait is trotting, but he excels in longer races and was a key player in the Can Am 100 1st place team.

I don’t usually bring in older dogs to the team, but I couldn’t turn down this big boy and his lifetime of experience training with Denis and Julie. I’ve learned a lot from Loki about what to expect from a truly hardworking dog, and having spent time with Denis I can see how Loki is who he is. In looking long and hard at the team and their ages, I decided to keep Loki for one more year because of his work ethic and hoping he’d be able to help instill that in puppies. Loki is spending his summer next to the puppy Bruce Springsteen, and they are constantly playing, which is good for the sometimes-socially-awkward Loki.

Loki is named after the impish mythological devil, from a litter of ‘devil dogs’ including Bezlebuth, Mara, and Copin. Because of the Quebecois accent he’s lived with his whole life, Loki’s name is pronounced like ‘Lucky,’ not ‘Loh-kee’.

Born: 2013

Jack (Tremblay) x Cascade (Anderson)

Race experience:

2020:
Can Am 100 (1st place)

2019:
Beargrease Marathon
Can Am 250