In October 2018, musher and author Blair Braverman posted a long Twitter thread that began with a simple promise: a story about Grinch. Grinch is one of her sled dogs, a black, scruffy, enormously keen athlete whom she described with obvious love as having a huge heart and being "dumb as a box of rocks". The thread follows one evening training run on a wheeled cart, and the very ordinary problem that tripped him up: turning around to go home.
The story spread widely because it captures something every dog owner recognises. Dogs can be brilliant at the jobs they love and completely baffled by small changes to routine. Grinch's mix of enthusiasm and confusion, told in short tweets with photos, reads like a comic strip.
Below you will find each screenshot from the thread in order, with a note on what is happening and some background on how sled dogs train, who Braverman is and why her dogs have such a large following. All photos and words in the screenshots are Braverman's own.
More from Blair Braverman: BlairBraverman.com | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
Meet Grinch
The thread opens with a single line, posted in the early hours of 11 October 2018. It drew thousands of likes before a single photo had been shared, a sign of how many people already followed her dog stories.
Our first look at Grinch: a dark, wiry-coated dog with a grey-flecked chest, chin raised happily into a scratch in a summer meadow. He is not a show husky but a typical working sled dog, bred for drive and stamina rather than looks.
Grinch in harness during a snowstorm, his face frosted with snow. Modern racing sled dogs are mostly "Alaskan huskies", a mixed working type rather than a registered breed, which is why they come in so many shapes and colours.
Braverman holds Grinch by his harness in a snowy yard while other dogs wait in bright pink booties. The booties protect paws from ice balls and sharp crust, and strength like his is what a team relies on to haul a loaded sled.
A big heart and not much else upstairs
Two cuddle shots: Grinch pressing his head into Braverman's lap and leaning against her in the snow. The tweet sets up the joke by praising his affection first.
Here comes the punchline, with a close-up of Grinch's earnest face and a dollop of snow on his nose. The teasing is clearly fond: she is describing a dog whose single-mindedness is part of his charm.
The first anecdote: Grinch once charged straight past a flock of wild turkeys because a lamppost needed his attention more. Any bird-dog owner would find that level of focus hard to believe.
During a rest stop at a baseball field between 40-mile runs, Grinch kept barking for the team to get moving again, so he was moved to a quiet spot by the fence to let the others sleep. Teaching dogs to rest on long journeys is a real skill in distance mushing.
Two photos of Grinch marking his territory in the woods. Scent-marking is normal male dog behaviour, and it is a running joke in the thread.
Grinch leaps up on his tether, mid-wiggle, for attention. Sled dogs are often kept on individual lines in a dog yard, and the most sociable ones greet every passer-by like this.
The night run
Grinch, mouth open and ears flying, in harness on a snowy trail. His favourite job is pulling, which is why he was chosen for an evening training run.
A summer shot of two dogs tangled in the frame of a wheeled training cart. Braverman admits Grinch's history with the cart has not been smooth, a hint of what is coming.
The run starts well. Lit by a headlamp, Grinch and his partner Jenga gallop down an old railway bed, a common choice for training because it is flat, wide and free of traffic.
After about a mile and a half, Braverman decided they had done enough and swung the cart round to retrace their route. On a short training run with just two dogs, turning by hand is quick and easy, at least for the musher.
Pointed back the way they came, she gave the two dogs their cue to set off. This text-only tweet is the calm before the confusion.
Why Grinch would not go
A short tweet and a dark photo: the two dogs standing still in harness on the trail. Nothing is broken, but nobody is moving.
Grinch is not refusing to work. He is yelling his excitement, blurred in the headlamp, with a battle cry Braverman spelled out as "ABBWABABAA!"
She agrees with him and tries again. Another text-only tweet, keeping the rhythm of the story.
The same result. In this photo Grinch turns his head back over his shoulder towards the cart, plainly unsure of what is being asked.
The tweet where the penny drops for the musher. The thread pauses for effect before the explanation.
The simplest possible diagnosis. A dog that is clearly keen to run is standing still because something about the situation does not make sense to him.
The explanation: they had been running one way, and now, with no turn of his own, the world was facing the other way. For a dog who thinks in routes and directions, being lifted round on a cart is genuinely disorienting. The rest of the thread, not shown here, reportedly ends with Grinch getting his bearings and pulling her home.
How sled dogs learn to turn
Grinch's confusion is funny, but it reflects real dog behaviour. Sled dogs learn routines quickly: where the trail goes, where it turns and which way is home. On a run they are usually turned with voice commands, "gee" for right and "haw" for left, with the leaders swinging the whole team round in a wide arc. When a team does that themselves, they feel the change of direction.
On a dark trail, being turned by the musher instead removes that cue. The dogs end up facing a direction they had just come from, without having chosen to go there. Some dogs simply carry on, while others stop and wait for something that makes sense. Lead dogs are prized precisely because they cope with this kind of uncertainty and keep the team moving.
Wheeled carts and four-wheelers are how most mushers train before snow falls. Training in cool autumn evenings also protects the dogs from overheating, which is a real risk for heavily coated working breeds.
Who is Blair Braverman?
Braverman is an American writer and long-distance musher who for years ran her team in the Wisconsin Northwoods with Quince Mountain, her partner at the time. Her 2016 memoir, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, describes her years learning to mush in Norway and working on an Alaskan glacier. In March 2019 she finished her first Iditarod, placing 36th in the roughly 1,000-mile race across Alaska, and in 2021 she and Mountain published Dogs on the Trail, a photo book about a year with their team.
Her social media threads about her dogs, each with distinct personalities, built a large and loyal audience. Fans follow individual dogs like characters in a series, which is why a simple tale about one dog failing to turn around found its way around the world.
She also shares videos on YouTube. This one, embedded in the original article, is a good place to start:
Why stories like this land
The thread works because it is honest. Braverman does not pretend Grinch is a genius. She celebrates him as a strong, loyal, enthusiastic animal with a few blind spots, which is how most of us see our own dogs. The humour comes from her timing and from his reactions, not from mocking him.
It is also a small window into a working relationship. Behind every viral sled dog story sit hours of feeding, training, foot care and patience. Grinch's confusion is a reminder that even a dog built to run thousands of miles still needs his person to explain the plan.
Sources: Thread and photos by Blair Braverman on Twitter (11 October 2018); Wikipedia: Blair Braverman; WPR: Blair Braverman; BlairBraverman.com.
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