HUMAN
Name: Debbie Corral
Age: 75
Residence: Eagle River, Alaska
Occupation: Retired Nurse
First Year Ran Iditarod: 1992
Years involved with Iditarod: 1
Iditarod Role: Musher
Current Location: Anchorage, Alaska
Date of Photo: March 3, 2026
Temperature: 68F Indoors
What is it about running sled dogs that you love so much?
What I love about running sled dogs is probably the same thing that everybody loves about running sled dogs, and that’s the dogs. I mean, we all get into it because we love dogs and we want to spend time with them. And it’s wonderful to have a litter of puppies that you raise and train and take them out mushing and just see how great they do. And you do, I do with them. And the best thing is just life is busy and demanding, and being able to just go out and hook the dogs up to the sled and take off down the trail and it’s suddenly very quiet and serene and just my dogs and me. And that’s what I like the best about dog mushing.
Question 2: What, who or how and when & why did you first get involved running the Iditarod?
Doing the iditarod was not something I ever thought much about. I had been dog mushing already for like nine years before I did the Iditarod. I got involved with mushing ’cause I just loved the dogs. I love being out. But I do have friends. I did meet a lot of friends out on the trails who had done the Iditarod, local people. And I could see how much it meant to them to have done it. And so I guess I was inspired by them. And I also read Mary Shield’s book. She inspired me a lot about her life with her sled dogs. And she had done the Iditarod, but also just living with her dogs and camping with her dogs. I went out winter camping with my sled dogs a few times after reading her book. So she was a huge influence.
Tell me about just one of your most memorable experiences running the Iditarod:
The most memorable experience running the Iditarod. I remember really distinctly an experience that I had. I was out with the dogs. There weren’t any other teams around me, no other people. We were just kind of out by ourselves. And it was getting to be twilight. And we were going through the trees and then all of a sudden the trees opened up and right in front of us was this huge deciduous tree. I don’t know what it was. It was probably a cottonwood, but I don’t really know. It was just a huge tree. All the leaves were off of it. And at the very top was this huge owl. And the owl was holding onto the top of the tree and just swinging himself back and forth and back and forth. It was like he was on an amusement ride or something.
I had never seen a bird do that. I’d never heard that they could do that. I’ll never forget that. It was just wonderful. And it was just my dogs and me. And those are the kinds of things you experience when you get out with your dogs and get out by yourself. It’s wonderful.
What in life do you know for sure?:
What I know for sure in life is that I will always have dogs in my life because life is always better with them in it. Yeah. What I also love about 16 years of dog mushing is that there are a lot of other life lessons you learn from being a musher. And what I mean by that is I remember when I came home one day with three sled dogs, my first three sled dogs, and I thought I would never want more than three. It was just fun going out. My husband stayed up all night building three dog houses for me. And the next morning he said, “If you ever get any more dogs, you’re going to have to learn how to build the dog house yourself.”
So I did. And it was like, I’m older, and my generation of women, we didn’t take shop. Girls took Home Ec. Guys took shop. I didn’t know the first thing about using power tools or socket wrench or anything or how to build a dog house. I didn’t have a clue. And so I learned how. I learned how to use a power saw and I built dog houses and lots of other things that I normally probably would never have done if I hadn’t gotten into dog mushing. So there’s a lot of other life lessons you learned by being a musher and taking care of a dog team. Yeah, it’s wonderful.