One in 8,700

In the middle of a field in Whiting, Vt., white snow blankets the rolling hills and dusts the evergreen trees. A sled glides swiftly through the powder, carving a double crease into the snow blanket’s perfection. The only noise for miles is the soft pitter-patter of dog paws accompanied by their faint panting. Lissy Heminway, a local musher who has been dog sledding for over half her life, alternates between hollering at the dogs and talking to them as if they are old friends.
It started as a child fantasy. Heminway grew up on a farm with five mutt farm dogs.
“For some strange reason I wanted them to be huskies,” said Heminway.
Then, when she was in college, a stray Siberian husky ended up in her car when she returned from a hike — an act of fate. Heminway could not find a home for the dog, so decided to take him in as her own.
“That was the beginning of the end for me, the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “From there everything just started to fall into place.”
Heminway trained her husky dog to pull her bike to campus everyday, storing him at a kennel while she went to class. When it came time to graduate, she knew that what she really wanted to do was work for someone who ran dogs, so that she could “get it out of her system.” Heminway went to work for Ed Blechner in Vermont, and after one season with him, she was ecstatic.
“Fireworks were going off in my brain,” she said.
Heminway continued working for Blechner for another season while also beginning to volunteer at the local Humane Society. It was there that she began to gather her own motley team of dogs.
“I wasn’t a purebred kind of person, and wasn’t a racing person either,” said Heminway. “I loved the big strong, freight dogs that had as big a heart as the things they pulled.”
Knowing that these mutts would not take her gracefully down a trail, however, Heminway contacted a fellow musher in Maine and began to inherit her “rejects.”
In a few years, Heminway inherited enough true sled dogs to make her first real team, and her first real adventure. Though she had learned from other mushers in the area, according to Heminway, “when you get a passion, nobody can tell you otherwise how to do it.” So Heminway began to teach herself. She learned from her dogs and they learned from her, creating the unique bond between mushers and their dogs that is impossible for anyone else to comprehend. Heminway even says that some of her dogs are telepathic; without any commands or direction, they know which way to go.
After six years of running her dog team, Heminway had a revelation.
“It became clear to me that this was my calling,” she said. “This is what I should be doing to make money.” At 28 years old, with 10 dogs, Heminway began her own dog sledding business, running day and half-day trips for tourists who wanted a slightly different Vermont experience. Dog sledding is the second most popular tourist attraction in Vermont, and Heminway’s business has skyrocketed.
After five years and the birth of two of her children, Heminway decided that the business was beginning to be too overwhelming so she cut back on the tourism side. Instead, she began to work with school groups and community service programs in the area that allowed her to educate children about her passion. To this day, Heminway continues to work mainly with Youth at Risk as well as several elementary schools in the area.