Staff Writer

It’s 7 a.m. and tucked back in the woods off Guinea Road, the sun is barely peeking through the clouds. Fresh snow crunches beneath Megan Holtham’s boots, while nine dogs barking pierce the quiet silence of Kennebunkport woods. 

“They hear me coming,” Holtham says, knowing they’re more excited about food than seeing her. 

The dogs – Sandy, Plankton, Squidward and Karen (from the “SpongeBob SquarePants” litter), Saturn and Mercury (from the “planet” litter), Monterey and Muenster (from the “cheese” litter) and Reebok (from the “shoe” litter) – are a cross between German shorthaired pointers, English pointers and Alaskan huskies. They anxiously wait for breakfast. 

Holtham doesn’t have what they’re looking for, but her boyfriend Quentin Sprague follows Holtham in a pick up with their morning kibble.

Sprague, 26, and Holtham, 25, met while attending the Landing School for Boat Building and Design in Arundel. Sprague, a 2000 graduate of Kennebunk High School, went into boat building to refine his carpentry skills and Holtham, originally from Martha’s Vineyard, decided to attend the school to combine her artistic talents with her passion for sailing.

Running, feeding and cleaning kennels has become just a part of their daily routine since then, though the couple still finds time for carpentry.

Four years ago when they adopted Koda, a Siberian husky, from the Animal Welfare Society in West Kennebunk, Sprague couldn’t run fast enough or long enough to burn off the puppy energy. 

“I jogged with her, but I couldn’t do as much as she needed,” Sprague says, explaining he would run Koda alongside his truck with a long lead and chain tied to her harness.

He later decided to try running her with the summer version of a dogsled – a cart on wheels.  Then, when winter hit, he tested his skills with a few loaner dogs at the Down East Sled Dog trade show, which is when Sprague says he knew he wanted to race.

“I was always involved in competitive sports, and I enjoyed taking the dogs somewhere to compete,” Sprague says. 

So the couple started building their own team and learning along the way. They started off with a temporary kennel set up near Sprague’s father’s home, before they bought their small home in the woods. Now, they’ve constructed sturdy fencing and three kennel houses bedded with hay so the dogs can keep warm. 

They’ve also learned how to pair up the dogs and pick their sled teams carefully. 

With Saturn and Mercury out of their kennel, the sisters run a few laps around the fenced-in area before Saturn picks a fight with Mercury. Without hesitation, Sprague grabs Mercury, while Holtham tugs on Saturn’s tail to “get her to turn around” and away from Mercury. 

Favoring her right front paw, Mercury limps while Holtham puts Saturn back in the kennel. 

“It only takes a couple bad experiences with one combo,” Holtham says. “Siblings seem to be the worst. Mercury and Saturn live in the same kennel, but we can’t run them together.”

Holtham and Sprague gage the dogs’ mentality and physical capabilities, matching up a team of four dogs close in age with a strong dog to lead the pack. Training three seasons out of the year, Sprague brings the dogs to the Blueberry Plains to run them on the sled during the winter and the kart in the fall and spring. With temperatures too hot to train in June, July and August, Sprague says the dogs settle down and “just hang out.” 

“Pretty much right from the start we had a real focus. Races give us something good to work towards,” Sprague said. 

Training on either the kart or sled prepares the dogs for five races between January and March. As members of the Down East Sled Dog Club, Sprague races a team of four dogs in a four-mile sprint race while Holtham skijors, racing on cross-country skis pulled by two dogs. 

“We’re doing increasingly better,” Holtham says. “The first year, Koda was our main leader and some friends lent us dogs for the competition. Having a mismatched team was hard.”

“If you can maintain top speed between 21 and 22 miles per hour for the whole race, you’ve got a winning team. Right now, we’re going on average 19 miles per hour,” Sprague says. 

With 10 to 12 teams on average in each class, Sprague says the Maine races they’ve participated in have been small, but they’re placing better than last year. At the beginning of February, Sprague and Holtham placed second in both of their races at the Farmington Frolic. 

“Next year, I’d like to do races outside of Maine. I’d really love to go to Quebec [to race],” Sprague says. “It’s fun to meet different people and gage your dogs against a different crowd.”

Having 10 dogs requires care no different than owning farm animals – feeding the dogs twice a day, exercising them and maintaining their habitat – Holtham says, but calls it “a little more personal.” When it’s below five degrees outside, all the dogs join them in the house.  

“It’s kind of cramped, but we have fold up crates for them inside,” Holtham says. 

With only Koda and Mercury running loose, Sprague begins to feed the crew of dogs. Hauling around a five-gallon bucket filled with a mix of kibble and water, he doles out portions to the dogs, making each of them sit before chowing down. 

The dogs lick their dishes clean within minutes, and Holtham says they started ordering kibble in bulk. The company they order from delivers 500 pounds of dog food that will last the 10 dogs two months. When they are running hard, she says they add chicken to the food and water mixture to help the dogs maintain body fat to stay healthy and keep warm. 

Besides learning how to match up dogsled teams and race, Holtham says they’ve learned a lot about veterinary care, working closely with their veterinarian at Mann Memorial Clinic in Arundel. They order regular medication and vaccinations for the dogs in bulk too, as well as keeping emergency supplies in case of an injury.

“Ordering the [bulk] food and medicine helps keep the cost down,” Holtham said.  

“It was more expensive when we started, when the dogs fought, and we’d have to go to the emergency vet,” Sprague says. 

“It’s a lot less expensive now that we know what to do and now we raise our own dogs,” Holtham says looking at Sandy, Plankton, Squidward and Karen.

The four were all from one litter this summer and Sprague says they are in training – paired up with the older dogs – for this year. 

“They’re more physically developed after a year. Some really come into it when they’re 2 and 3 years old,” Holtham says adding she hopes the “Bikini Bottom” crew will be ready and able for next racing season.