May 23, 2021
When the sun shines and the wind dies down, Hermitage-Sandyville is heaven.
The small town sits quietly on the south coast of Newfoundland, between the ocean and endless green hills that most would call mountains.
It’s late winter, and Angie Watson and her team of sled dogs are taking advantage of the bright sun and hard snow. They scrape across the road to an old snowmobile trail and slowly disappear into the hills above her hometown.
This is one of life’s great joys.
“When we're doing this I'm one with them. It makes you feel alive … like part of the earth ... and just look at them go this morning. They're loving it.”
The get-go
Watson returned to Sandyville with her family nearly a decade ago, after living away for 16 years. Since returning they have taken up mushing, a first for the area.
The family’s adventures in dogsledding started with her daughter Jade, when she was seven.
“I have drawing upon drawing that Jade did, of herself in a sled with a team of dogs pulling her,” Watson said.
She’d seen the film Eight Below and fallen in love with huskies. She saved enough money to buy the family’s first Siberian, Rosebud. Jade then took it upon herself to learn mushing commands and got the 60-pound dog to pull her — sometimes on a bike and sometimes on rollerblades.
“I'm in the yard and there's seven-year-old Jade, who was really tiny when she was a little girl,” Watson said with a laugh. “And she's on rollerblades with a helmet, and I'm like Jade 'wear your elbow pads’! And she's like, 'No mom, they look dorky!’"
With both kids now grown, Watson and her husband, Kenny, live in Sandyville along with their eight Siberian huskies: Diesel, Shibaan, Gwynneth, Stardust, Faolan, Asami, Blue and Timber.
From Sandyville to Hollywood
Watson’s first husky, Diesel, is somewhat unassuming. Until you lock eyes with him.
Diesel just might be the first dog from rural Newfoundland to star in a big budget Hollywood movie. He played the role of Togo, alongside Willem Dafoe, in the 2019 Disney film Togo.
The movie tells the untold story of how legendary musher Leonhard Seppala and his team of dogs (led by Togo) saved a remote Alaskan port from a diphtheria outbreak in 1925, by trekking 264 miles in a winter storm to help collect a cure. Up until now, another dog, named Balto, had gotten all the credit.
AUDIO | Gavin Simms brings us to the south coast of Newfoundland for this documentary from CBC's Atlantic Voice:
Watson recalls seeing the casting call a few years back, and she applied on a whim. Low and behold they wrote back and wanted Diesel for the part. After much deliberation, they sent him off to Hollywood.
“Then it was nine months of worrying if he was OK,” Watson said. “Missing him, worried that I wouldn't get them back.”
When the film was finally released, Watson said they wore the replay button out.
“I loved it … It was very historically accurate,” she said. “Feels like a wrong has been righted, and I'm glad Diesel had to play a part in that.”
Hills and valleys
As Angie and the dogs rewind back down the hills with Sandyville in sight, she’s already thinking of the next jaunt.
“I know what my priorities are. Living life, not in a laundry room, but on a frozen lake in Sandyville with four happy dogs.”
Living with a house full of dogs and forging this new path hasn’t always been an easy glide.
“One of the things that I had to overcome… is to stop worrying about what other people think,” Watson said.
“I just realized … that someday I'm going to die. We all are. And when I get to that point in my life, I want to look back and and see that I did the things that made me happy.”
