How It All Began

Hello!

Boo proudly wants to thank you for subscribing to our newsletter all about urban mushing and our lives with the coolest sled dogs. We’re excited to start this journey with you all, as it serves as another way to share our stories with more people (especially those who have migrated away from social media lately). We hope you enjoy it!

Before we get started, we want to let you know about our content publishing schedule. Each week, we will send out two newsletters, one on Tuesday and one on Friday.

The Tuesday newsletters will be looking back at Hannah and Riley’s past, how we got involved, stories from the last three years, etc. Friday’s newsletters will be all about what’s happening with us and the dogs that week.

If you ever have any questions for us, simply reply to any of our emails and let us know! We’d be happy to answer any questions you have (if we can, of course lol).

We’ll continue to adapt and grow our content as time goes on, but we promise you’ll enjoy our behind the scenes looks into our lives with the wonderful Boo and Pence.

Without further ado…

One of the most common questions I (Hannah) get asked is “how did you first get involved with mushing?”. Well, it began back in late 2018.

I was scrolling through Twitter (now X) and came across one of Blair Braverman’s threads about her sled dogs. I thought the dogs were cute and she was a great storyteller, but had no real knowledge of sled dogs or the sport of mushing. I believe the first thread of hers I ever saw was “SURPRISE BITCH IT’S BOUDICA”:

A few weeks later in January 2019, I was on vacation in Florida. I couldn’t sleep, it was the middle of the night. I ended up “Twitter stalking” Blair, and read through a bunch of her previous threads about her sled dogs. (I’m sure many of you have done the same over the years… don’t deny it!)

Loving all the content, I started sending my favorite posts (pretty much all of them) to my sister Beth and my friends. When attaching the threads in messages, I included captions like “OMG this Twitter account is top notch!”, “I love this Twitter account more and more every day”, “I’m telling you, you need to look at this account! It’s hilarious and adorable”, “How cool would this be to try some day”, and “Even the names of these dogs are great lol”.

I became slightly obsessed with Blair’s stories and dog photos to the point I was refreshing her feed every day to see if she had published anything new. I also stumbled upon Blair’s partner, Quince Mountain on Twitter at this time and immediately followed him as well, because, duh…more dog content.

A couple of months later in March 2019, Blair ran the Iditarod, a 1,000 mile sled dog race across some of the most challenging and beautiful terrain in Alaska. I found myself glued to my phone, refreshing the trackers on the Iditarod to see where she was and how many dogs she had with her. (BTW - Boo was one of the dogs that finished the Iditarod with Blair!)

I was checking local news sources that were covering the race to see if they had any updates on her run thus far. Of course, I sent these updates to Beth and my friends, who also became invested. One message said “She’s in the middle of the pack, only had to drop one dog at a checkpoint so far, so she still has 13 left which is good. I’m slightly obsessed with this right now lol”.

This was also the first time I heard about the Uglydogs (the supporters and online community built around BraverMountain Mushing). I started following some of them on Twitter because they seemed to know a lot about mushing and the Iditarod, and I wanted to learn more.

And folks, it all went downhill from there lol.

Here’s proof:

We’d love to hear how you first got into sled dogs/mushing! If you’re reading this in email, reply to this email and let us know. If you’re reading on our website, leave a comment below.

Stay tuned next week to hear what happened next in my journey with sled dogs!

Until then, we will have another newsletter later this week. Don’t forget to subscribe (if you haven’t already) and share with your friends! There’s some sweet FREE rewards from the dogs for referring your friends.