Michaela Maddalena, 15, comes from a family of four children, an older sister and younger sister and brother who are twins. She started running dogs last year when she trained for the Jr. Iditarod with her friend Stacey Tarpy in Seward, Alaska. She is back there training for this year’s Jr. Iditarod. Michaela is home schooled and is in the 10th grade. She participates in drama and enjoys bead working and drawing. She says she really enjoys going into schools and doing demonstrations of sled dogs for the young children. She wants to become a language interpreter and is now fluent in Spanish and Sign Language and is taking French. She will start college in the fall of 2005 (at the age of 16) and will be taking Italian, French II and Russian. She plans to add Chinese and Japanese in the near future. She says she very much plans to continue dog mushing. “It’s a part of who I am and I enjoy it too much to stop.”