Name: Blue Steel
Age: 8 1/2
Male or Female: Male
Owner: Monica Zappa
Musher currently running this dog: Monica Zappa
Team Position(s): Lead Dog
Number of completed Iditarod races: 4
Current Location: Ophir, Alaska
Date of Photo: March 12, 2020
Temperature: 20 F outside
What are his/her unique personality characteristics?
Blue Steel’s personality is… I call him… Well, he’s amazing. Has an ego, can be a shit-head. He knows that he’s pretty much the man, and he knows that everybody likes to take pictures of him. And he definitely plays into that. But when it comes to getting through a storm in lead, that’s his favorite thing to do. He plows into the wind, and he’s run most Iditarods in single lead. And it’s actually really fun to watch him really shine when the wind is 40-miles-an-hour and it’s 20 below. That’s his favorite thing to do.
What is that litter’s “theme” name and other siblings’ names from that litter?:
Blue Steel’s litter was the Rope litter, and so he and siblings are named after different types of rope that we use for fishing and whatnot. Blue Steel is actually what I use on my gangline as well, and we use that in our fishing line. His siblings are Manila, which is a brown type of rope, and Kevlar. Kevlar’s on the team, too. Yeah, that’s his littermates. And it just so happens kind of coincidentally that Blue Steel, a lot of people think he was named after the movie Zoolander. Of course, there’s the model look Blue Steel, and even though that’s not what he was named after, he’s really live
What is the bloodline?
Yeah, Blue Steel’s bloodline comes from… It was a breeding that my partner Tim Osmar and I did. Really, the first breeding that we did together… both his parents are Tim Osmar’s bloodlines. His dad’s name was Eagle, and he goes back to a dog named Sun Bear. Actually, I screwed that up. His mom’s name was Raven, who goes back to a dog named Sun Bear. And his dad’s name was Eagle, whose dad was Scout, a dog of Tim’s as well. He was half-siblings to Lance Mackey’s Zorro and out of a excellent dog named Doc Holiday. And those bloodlines go back to Scheer… basis of a lot of great sled dogs.