by Ashley Heeney

Reporter

Tallmadge -- Tom Roig -- a dog musher in Shreve, in Wayne County -- wants the Dunbar Primary School students who visited him at his home this past spring to know he's doing the 2008 Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Alaska and the eaglets have taken flight.

"Musher" is the name for someone who drives a dog sled team.

Dunbar's two third-grade classes, taught by Cathy Fuller and June Musolino, recently visited Roig and his 28 dogs on a field trip just before the end of their school year.

Fuller developed a teaching unit around the 1,150-mile Iditarod Dog Sled Race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, for both classes to study.

The third-graders read books by Gary Paulsen, an Alaskan musher who writes about the Iditarod. Students made their own musher sleds from magnetic cars and used the forces of incline and friction to see who would win the race. They also watched video clips of the Iditarod race, tracking their own musher and recording checkpoints, distance traveled and dog counts.

Progress was tracked by the use of the school's computer lab. Students learned all about geography, weather, plant and animal habitats of the Arctic terrain.

"They also learned about perseverance and endurance," said Fuller.

The only entry from Ohio for the 2007 Iditarod, Roig said he typically goes out to schools to do presentations about mushing, but given the option, "they all wanted to come to the kennels, and the weather was cool enough to hook the dogs up."

Demonstrating how he hooks the dogs up and trains with them, Roig showed students an example of the dogs in action when Fuller went on a ride with eight of the dogs hooked up to a 4-wheeler in neutral gear.

"My legs were shaking when I got off," she said.

In a race, 12 to 16 dogs are hooked to a sled. A sled dog can travel at 20 miles per hour, or more, Roig explained.

"I did my first dog mushing trip in 1995 in Alaska and got bitten by the bug, so to speak," said Roig, who practices in Shreve with his 4-wheeler and builds miles up slowly with the goal of having 1,500 miles on the dogs before he leaves for Alaska in late winter.

"It's a lot of hard work, but most of time I have a big grin on my face while running the dogs," he said.

The field trip was a very pleasurable time for everyone, according to Fuller and Roig.

"He was impressed with how much our children knew about the race," said Fuller.

E-mail: aheeney@recordpub.comPhone: 330-686-3911