United States Eventing Association

Eventing in the Summer, Sled Dog Racing in the Winter: How Kate Homan Balances Both Passions

Kate Homan’s eventing schedule keeps her pretty busy. Between campaigning horses and teaching a small string of clients across northern New Hampshire, she spends her spring and summer seasons focused on her horses while her fiance works their 100-head dairy cattle operation. And as if that wasn’t enough to have to juggle, once the weather starts to cool down just north of the White Mountains, Homan turns her attention to her other passion—sled dog racing.

“We have a farm and a kennel and all of our horses are wonderful with the dogs and all of our dogs are great with the horses, so that is pretty fun!” she said.

The kennel of 21 Siberian Huskies is conjoined with the barn of nine horses Homan keeps at George and Ann Cook’s facility which she and fellow eventer and dog racer Kaitlyn Yacobucci manage. In fact, it's split right down the middle, so at any given time, she is surrounded by the two things that she loves most.

Homan first became involved with the sport of sled dog racing after college nine years ago when her coach at the time, Nancy Guyotte, introduced her to George and Ann.

“They were looking for somebody to come in and help with some of their horses and their dogs,” she said. “I had always loved dogs, but I had no kennel dog experience or experience racing. I thought it sounded pretty cool.”

The Cooks have a long history in both horses and sled dog racing. George evented for almost 20 years and has now at the age of 70 turned his attention to dressage, while Ann rides and carriage drives. In the early 1990s, George and Ann packed up their life and their toddler and moved to Alaska so George could run the Yukon Quest. The bloodlines of the dogs he ran in that 1,000 mile sled dog race are the same bloodlines of the dogs in their program today.

George and Ann, who have over 40 years of experience in racing, educated Homan on the ins and outs of the sport and managing these four-legged athletes. As time went on, Homan found herself training the dogs and then entering her first race.

“There are a lot of parallels between eventing and sled dogs in the conditioning aspects,” said Homan. “There are a lot of differences as well, but it has that same sort of attention to detail with how many miles you're putting on, your speed, the basic conditioning of an animal, and so forth. There are a lot of similarities there, especially when you start looking more at the long-format endurance. That was already something that I really enjoyed doing with the horses, so it came naturally to me with the dogs as well.”

Homan runs mid-distance racing events which are 10-20 miles long. She travels anywhere in the northeast where there is snow, as long as conditions are safe, to get her races in with her team.

Balancing the intense schedules of both sports has its challenges, but thankfully prime eventing season in Area I coincides with the dogs’ downtime, and vice versa.

“This time of year, the dogs just get to be dogs,” said Homan. “They hang out and get to rest under their fans and take plenty of naps. In the fall, we start to pick their work up a little bit. It’s very similar to horses in that you start with your slow miles and gradually increase that as they’re handling the workload.”

Like horses, Homan takes a good look at the conditions each day before hooking up the dog team for their daily work. Heat and humidity are extremely stressful for the breed, so she only works the dogs on days when the weather sets them up for success. She finds that September and October tend to be the months that work best for legging them up, but then she has other battles to contest.

“It does get a little bit tricky as we have less daylight, and we have two or three teams that we are wanting to work for six or eight miles each on dry land and keep the horses going as well," she said. "Our horses compete through October, so September and October are pretty busy. We often finish the dogs by headlight at night, but for the most part during the peak of eventing season, the dogs are just hanging out, and then in November we begin to taper the horses down until the ground freezes, which is right about the time we get snow, and we can increase the dogs’ mileage.”

After the horses’ winter vacation, Homan enjoys making the trip to Aiken, South Carolina, in the spring to get them going for the season. The dogs tag along as well once their racing season is over.

“It very much depends on the race season, but we typically go down to Aiken through part of May. The horses will often go down a bit earlier," she said.

Her close-knit relationship with Yacobucci helps make everything they do with the two sports possible. Homan jokes that she and Yacobucci spend more time with one another than they do with their partners throughout the year just trying to make the balance possible, especially when it comes to their trip south for the winter.

“Kaitlyn and I split tasks up evenly,” said Homan. “She and I run the dogs together and work the horses together. We each have our string that we train, but we will hop on each other’s horses when one of us is away from the farm. One of us will stay home and run the dogs while the other one goes down to Aiken to get the horses geared up. But down in Aiken, our horses share fence lines with the kennel there as well.”

Homan completed her first race six years ago and has continued to invest her time and heart into the sport. Of the 21 dogs in her care, she now owns one herself and co-owns six.

“It’s really a family operation,” said Homan. “We are all picking the teams together and talking about the races. It’s a pretty incredible opportunity to have their experience and their willingness to share that experience.”

While splitting her life between two very intense hobbies can pose its fair share of challenges, Homan wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I think it's just life; inevitably you feel like you are being pulled in a lot of different directions, but I think that is life with animals regardless," she said. "It’s always about trying to find that balance, and I think we have really found the structure that works for us.”