On screen: A dog-sledding dairy farmer loses it all, races back stronger
Jan. 27, 2021 | By Laura Hardie | Correspondent
Before the recent heavy snowfall, Doug Butler and his dog team set up at Farr's Field along Rt. 2 to offer rides in a modified "dog sled" with wheels that worked well on hard-packed snow. Photo by Laura Hardie
If you’ve driven by Farr’s Field in Waterbury in the past few weeks, you may have seen a dog sledding team giving people rides in a cart across the snow. The old white Ford truck parked nearby outfitted with dozens of green wooden dog crates is a 1995 diesel with 270,000 miles. It’s likely one of the oldest dog trucks in the country and it’s owned by 60-something Doug Butler of Middlebury.
I live next to Farr’s Field and met Butler a few weekends ago though it seems like I've known him for years. His story both devastated and inspired me when I first heard it about five years ago from Vermont filmmaker Tommy Hyde.
In 2016, Hyde began documenting Butler's struggle to continue to run his dairy farm in Middlebury. It was an all-too-familiar plotline: Family dreams crushed by the machine of our broken food system. Another dying dairy farm.
I was working in the dairy industry at the time and Hyde reached out to me about helping get the film off the ground. At first, the storyline wasn’t a surprise. Our country’s antiquated federal milk pricing system means dairy farmers get paid the same price today for their milk that they did in the 1980s. A lot of dairy farmers are hanging on by a thread, financially and mentally.
And yet, Butler has this spark no one can put out. One that comes with a lot of whooping and hollering. I soon learned that it’s his passion for another type of animal that’s kept him alive: His dogs. And his dream to race a champion dog sledding team. “To beat the heck out of those rich guys in Alaska” as he says.
Hyde captured all of this in the documentary he made about Doug called “Underdog,” which debuted at the Camden Film Festival in Maine last September. When I saw it, I equally bawled my eyes out and laughed at this nutty Vermonter. Watching this good-hearted guy lose the family farm while trying to stay upbeat and keep his dog sledding dream alive struck a chord.
“There’s an interesting resonance with it right now and the pandemic,” Hyde said. “How the film focuses on Doug wrestling with isolation and loneliness and forces beyond his control. Seeing how he responds to that is really inspiring and probably the original reason why I was fascinated with him.”
An unlikely pair travels to Alaska
Hyde studied architecture at Middlebury College where he graduated in 2015. He met Butler through an assignment for a digital storytelling class. Little did they know, the trajectory of both of their lives would change after they met. Hyde felt called to document Butler long after the class was over to help Butler realize his dream of racing in Alaska – a dream that seemed unlikely otherwise.
“Doug told me about this dream of going to Alaska and it seemed it was going to happen tomorrow, and I started to realize he had never gone, and he had never left his farm for five days in his entire life,” Hyde recounted.
Ultimately, Hyde cobbled enough funding together, in large part through the Town Hall Theater in Middlebury, so he could document their 2017 trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, where Butler competed in the Open North American Sled Dog Race.
“Alaska is so beautiful and exciting, and I want to do that again in the worst way,” Butler said. “I’m not going to get rid of my four-legged sweet-hearted babies and I’m not going to stop doing this.”
Dog sledding tours take off
Fast forward to mid-January 2022, and the same old white dog sledding truck that traveled to Alaska in the “Underdog” film was parked in the field next to our house in Waterbury. When I saw it I thought, it can't be. It's Doug Butler. I felt like I’d spotted a celebrity in my backyard.
I went over to introduce myself and found out Butler has a successful dog sledding business now called Cobble Hill Kennel. A handful of people help him organize and provide rides for the public, including Jules Struzyna, a Middlebury College graduate who co-founded Cobble Hill Kennel with Butler.
“I came up to Vermont for Middlebury and never left because of Cobble Hill,” Struzyna said.
The mushing business took off in 2019, the year that Butler sold the dairy cows and downsized to raise beef cattle instead.
“I went through a rough time and lost a lot of money, and I was too far behind and so I had to sell the dairy cows. That was one of the hardest days of my life,” Butler recalled. “My wife looked at me and said, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to chase women.’ And she said, ‘Get cleaned up, get a haircut, and good luck.’”
A classic Vermonter, stories are what Doug does best. With fire in his eyes he told my husband and me tales of dog sledding in Alaska and Wyoming. He’s had this fever since 1976 when he first saw a race at Shelburne Farms and – as the story goes – promptly bought a team of dogs on the way home.
Since then, he said he’s competed in hundreds of races and nurtured a love for dog sled racing in countless Middlebury College students, including Struzyna.
“Doug has always raced but financially that is challenging so I wanted to start the tour business to help fund the racing side of things,” Struzyna said. “I also love giving rides, so people see how much the dogs love to pull and run, how amazingly hype and friendly they are.”
A different kind of dog
About the dogs.
Butler and his team have 55. They’re not the typical Husky sled dog team that might come to mind. They’re Eurohounds – a cross between an Alaskan husky and German Shorthaired Pointer, first popularized in dog sled racing in Scandinavia.
These days, Butler and the Cobble Hill Kennel crew drive back and forth from Middlebury with about 30 dogs on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to give rides booked through Umiak Outfitters.
The original plan was to offer dog sledding rides on the VAST trail in the Mad River Valley in December as they did last year, but a lack of snow moved the operation to Farr’s Field into January, for 15-minute rides that relied on a wheeled cart, rather than a sled.
The latest snowstorm brought them back to the VAST trail in the valley where they can take riders out for about 45 minutes covering 7 to 8 miles for a price of $399. Ample snow now means they’re able to use a sled.
They divide the dogs to offer six or seven rides each day. Each team of 10 dogs can handle two rides before they’re whooped. “But then they still want to do a third one…Someone in Fairbanks said I have the most fun, craziest dogs out there,” Butler said.
“It’s not work, it’s pleasure,” Butler shared when asked about how much work it is. “If you had a rough, hard day you go take care of your babies. They love on you, and before you know it, you’re having a good day.”
Film sparks discussion about rural mental health
Butler’s mushing story is told in “Underdog,” one of the roughly 100 out of 8,000 films from around the world that were recently selected to be included in the Slamdance Film Festival. The physical event took place Jan. 20-23 in Park City, Utah, with online viewing running Thursday, Jan. 27, through Feb. 6.
The festival is meant to be a more accessible alternative to the well-known Sundance Festival, both for new filmmakers and viewers. A $10 virtual pass gives you access to all of the festival films from feature-length entries to shorts. Visit Slamdance.com for more info.
One upcoming extra coming up is a virtual Q&A on Monday, Jan. 31, at 8 p.m. EST with Butler and the “Underdog” filmmakers. Hyde now works with Mosaic Films and his colleague, Aaron Woolf, the executive producer for the film, will also join the discussion.
After the film festival, Hyde says the priority will be screening the film in rural areas this spring and summer to spark a discussion about mental health.
“We call it ‘the curiously optimistic tale of Doug Butler’ because it’s strangely positive, even though it’s gritty and dark at times,” Hyde said.
Information released with the film points to statistics such as an increase in adult depression during the pandemic; a suicide rate among farmers 1.5 times greater than the general population; that 2020 saw hundreds of bankruptcies among U.S. family farms, while Vermont has lost about 35% of its dairy farms in the past decade.
All fodder for discussion around the “Underdog” theme.
Watching “Underdog” might leave you with a new perspective on loss and what comes next. Dairy farming is not just a job, but an identity, and losing it is traumatic. Finding joy again is an act of defiance. And then to share that unlikely joy with other people is remarkable.
Butler knows this.
“You wouldn’t believe the people I get screaming. It’s so much fun to see people excited and happy,” Butler said of the thrills his wintertime rides bring to people. With his signature gleam in his eyes he adds, “Life goes by fast, and so let’s help people and get them happy and excited…no, no I mean, I kick their butts.”
Laura Hardie is a freelance writer in Waterbury.
Director’s statement
Tommy Hyde is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores people and stories at the fringes of society. “Underdog,” a film 10 years in the making, is his directorial debut. He frequently collaborates with Mosaic Films, and is currently in production on two docu-series with them as a producer and writer. A graduate of Middlebury College, he resides in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.
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“I had never made a film or held a camera until I met Doug. As an architecture student at a picturesque New England College, it was easy to feel like I was living in the glossy pages of a state tourist brochure. I rode my bike down country roads, and liked to pass the last dairy farm in town to take in the view of its black and white Holsteins dotting pastures overlooking the Adirondacks.
But that angle framed out the reality just across the road—where broken down agricultural equipment littered the property, barns sagged precariously, and a gregarious, sixty something year-old farmer was happy to engage any and all who passed.
One fall evening Doug introduced me to his cows and his dogs and his dreams. I was immediately fascinated by the man, but I wasn’t sure why. So over the course of the next few years I’d drop by the farm, sometimes missing class. Before long I was bringing a camera.
I think I saw a lot of myself in Doug. I’m a dreamer and an extrovert, and in Doug I saw a potential future—one where my hopes and plans didn’t pan out. I wanted to know if that was okay, and how to harvest happiness from the nooks and crannies of a downtrodden life.
Over the course of the next nine years a unique relationship developed. At times I’d blur into the background, in others I would drop the camera to pitch in on the farm. Along the way, Doug would confide in me things he hadn’t shared to anyone but his dogs. And I, rather slowly, learned how to record some of it.
I hope as you sit shotgun in Doug’s rusty old truck through the peaks and valleys of his life, you will glean some bits of what Doug shared with me—wisdom that can only come from dreaming big and coming up short.” ~ Tommy Hyde