* *
[barking of dogs]
- Winter in northern Wisconsin is for the dogs.
[panting of dogs]
Sled dogs, that is.
[scraping along snow]
- Gee.
Gee.
- For Talia Martens, dog sledding is a family affair.
[swoosh of sled]
- I was born into it.
My mom has been doing it for 40 years.
So I've mainly been doing it all my life.
[barking]
Hello Bandit.
- The 17-year-old loves to run her Alaskan Huskies.
- Birk, you wanna run lead?
- The dogs love it too.
- Who's a good girl?
When we hook up, they get really excited.
[bark, bark]
Come on.
Ready!
And once we take off, they're just go.
Full blast.
* *
- During the winter months,
she does daily training runs on her family's property in Brule.
- When we first start training, we do five-mile runs
and those are normally fast.
- Building up the dogs' endurance
to prepare them for long-distance racing.
- I do, like 20 miles, then two-hour rest.
Then another 20 miles, and then a two-hour rest,
then 15.
And then, I just up the miles as the training goes on.
They enjoy it a ton.
- Talia's raised these dogs from birth,
and trained them to listen to her commands.
- This one right here, Radar.
He's my youngest out of the bunch.
For me, being the boss, I have to be firm,
so they know who's the boss.
- Most of the time, they listen.
- Ready!
Up, up, up, up!
Good dogs.
- They respect me and know who the boss is.
And they don't test me.
Well, they do, but...
Gee.
Gee!
[pleading] Gee.
[exasperated] Fine.
- And sometimes it's like herding... dogs.
- Ho, no.
Ho.
Gee.
Yes!
- Talia and her huskies have run races
across the upper Midwest.
In 2018, she signed up for a new challenge.
She spent a month and a half in Alaska
training for the Junior Iditarod.
- Somebody mentioned it to me
and I was like, "Oh, that sounds pretty cool."
I've always wanted to run dogs in Alaska.
Here we go.
- It's a 150-mile race across the Alaskan wilderness
over two days.
A grueling adventure.
- It really was hard mentally.
It wasn't actually that bad.
I thought it was going to be, like, really hard,
but it actually wasn't.
But I think the races before really helped me prepare myself for it.
- Talia finished ninth, in 19 hours and 24 minutes.
- I was so happy.
I was ready for a new set of clothes
and a warm bed.
- She enjoyed her first trip to Alaska so much,
it might not be her last.
- It just really upped my confidence.
I want to go up there again and do it over again.
It was a lot of fun.
- There's one catch.
Talia turns 18 this year,
meaning she's no longer eligible for the Junior Iditarod.
Next time, she'll have to race against the adults
in the world-famous Iditarod, a 1,000 mile race.
[swoosh of sled]
- Honestly, yeah, I could see myself doing it.
* *
- Until then, Talia and her dogs will be here,
out on the trails,
mushing their way through another Wisconsin winter.
[swoosh of sled]
* *
- But once I get out there, I relax and it's just...
...it's very fun.