Area man finds happiness in Alaska

by Clarke Davis

Life in America is supposed to be about the pursuit of happiness and there is at least one fellow we believe has found it.

Nicholas Guy left these parts in 2010 to be a handler for a sprint dog racer in Minnesota. From there he went to Alaska handling dogs for mushers in training for the Iditarod. He never came back.

In his own words posted online he states that he “never understood what there was in the world outside of my little box. I thought the path to happiness was lined with mega pixels, beautiful women and fancy stuff. I never thought I would be at my happiest dead broke, pushed to exhaustion and often fighting off frost bite.”

“He never had a dog growing up but always wanted one,” said his mother, Penny Guy, a Meriden native living in Topeka. “He is now a dog musher and takes care of more than 50 dogs and has never been happier in his life.”

After training dogs for three seperate Iditarod kennels and a world champion sprint racer, he believes it’s time now to work toward the operation of his own kennel.

“With the help of my friends and fans this could quickly become a reality,” he said.

For a fundraiser, he uses his photography skills and produces an annual calendar with pictures of his dogs and racing scenes in Alaska. His web site is wanderlustsleddogs.com where he is attempting to gain sponsors for his racing next year.

He will compete in two dog sled races beginning Jan. 10. That’s the Cooper Basin 300 followed by the Tustemena 200 Feb. 1. Completing these races will qualify him to run the 440-mile Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome in 2015.

Guy spent the summer working on Troublesome Glacier with a tourist operation that included a helicopter ride to the glacier so tourists could take dog sled rides. He is now at Snowhook Kennels at Willow, Alaska, helping train dogs for next year’s Iditarod.

Guy’s own words best describe the satisfaction he’s found in his new life: “It’s amazing how the toughest fights bring out a feeling of truly living and can teach us so much more about ourselves then the easy roads. In the deepest misery the most painful of circumstances do we find the true heart of human emotion. I never understood myself or the world quite like I have since I started my journey into the sled dog world.

“Now my best friends are the dogs that pull me through frozen hell and back, my favorite music is the sound of the runners sliding gently across a snow covered trail with a backdrop of panting dogs or the chorus they sing before we bed down for the night and my favorite place to be is out in the middle of nowhere in a world where the wildlife outnumber man 100-1 with my best friends trotting along in a happy line stretched out in front of me.”

Nicholas is the grandson of Anita Grahem, Meriden, and the late Lloyd Grahem.