Sled Dog Adventures: Rainbow Volunteers Help Lake Mills Woman Write Memoir
Sled Dog Adventures: Rainbow Volunteers Help Lake Mills Woman Write Memoir
by Kenyon Kemnitz, Rainbow Community Care
Rainbow volunteer Paula Renz, with Julie Verrette, and fellow volunteer Karen Ferris.
The task seemed impossible: take a lifetime of journals, notebooks, essays, and scattered memories of the life of a dog musher and kennel owner in the Wisconsin wilderness and assemble them into a cohesive memoir before Parkinson’s disease stole the final chapter.
For Rainbow Friends in Action (FIA) volunteer Paula Renz, the work of documenting a life began not with a task, but with a signed Iditarod poster on Julie Verrette's wall. The conversations it inspired quickly shifted to the necessary effort of organizing a lifetime of memories into a cohesive autobiography. As Julie struggled to recall basic facts, Paula and fellow FIA volunteer Karen Ferris knew they were racing against the clock.
FIA is a volunteer program dedicated to providing “neighborly assistance” to people who are elderly, disabled, or seriously ill and could benefit from receiving a little extra non-medical help to remain living independently in their homes. For Julie, this assistance evolved into a mission to capture her story before it was lost.
Julie spent a lifetime teaching people to transform their dreams into reality through a process she calls "visioning." But when she became ill with Parkinson’s and struggled to recall basic memories, the vision of completing her own book—an account about her years owning a sled dog kennel in Wisconsin—nearly vanished. It took the help of two dedicated Rainbow volunteers to organize her life’s work.
After sharing her desire with Paula to write about her "dear dogs," Paula pushed Julie to take the first step.
"I told her why not start and see how it goes," Paula said.
But with Julie’s health declining and Parkinson’s starting to affect her motor skills and memory, completing this ambitious project was in jeopardy. Paula took on the massive task of sorting through the enormous collection of materials.
“It was a matter of assembling everything, trying to put it in chronological order, and taking lots of notes from conversations with Julie. It was clear to me that time was of the essence,” Paula stated.
Julie’s journey to becoming a musher - a career that saw her owning a kennel in Florence, Wisconsin, and training teams of up to 44 dogs – surprisingly began in the world of human resources and conflict resolution, where she taught “visioning.”
Realizing the most impactful training shouldn't take place in a sterile office, she determined a natural setting was in the backwoods with a team of dogs.
She came across a chance ad that legendary musher Susan Butcher was selling sled dogs. This led to a phone call that sparked Julie’s journey to a new life.
"Moving to another community meant a totally different, outdoor lifestyle, fully engaged with dogs in a wilderness setting,” Julie recalled. “I could step out my front door and drive 100 miles on a sled anywhere to where those trails would take me in Michigan or Wisconsin."
Susan selected a seasoned dog named Scuba from her 1991 Iditarod winning team for Julie. Julie had intended to introduce herself into the world of mushing with just one loyal companion. But immediately those plans changed. It turned out Scuba was pregnant, and on the very night she arrived at Julie’s home, she delivered an unexpected litter of nine puppies, instantly transforming her life into the exhilarating chaos of a lively pack.
“I learned probably three quarters of what I know from that dear dog,” Julie said. “She came to live with a complete stranger who knew little to nothing about her world. She trusted me and I trusted her.”
Julie also wanted to learn how to drive a sled and the first step was just staying on without falling off. She still remembers one fast, downhill run with Scuba at the highest peak in Iron Mountain, Michigan.
“We hit a boulder, and it dumped me into the snow and she kept going,” Julie said. “That was my first lesson of “never let go,” which is one of the primary rules of driving a dog sled.”
Through countless hours of observation and practice, Julie grew to understand the rhythm of the dogs and the demands of the trail. Years later, she met another famous musher, Aliy Zirkle, the only woman to win the brutal, 1,000-mile Yukon Quest race. Julie went camping with Zirkle on the Iditarod Trail, where she soaked up more secrets about the sport.
With 80 acres of space to roam, retired sled dogs came to Julie with a newfound purpose in life. They remained active, engaged, and most importantly, loved. Julie showed them another world filled with fun and excitement.
Even though the dogs were no longer competing in elite, long-distance events like the world famous 1,000-mile Iditarod, they still had the desire to run. Julie pursued her love of racing by taking part in several Wisconsin Trailblazers Sled Dog Club races, with never a thought of winning, just a simple goal of giving the dogs a chance to continue doing what they love.
"I took Aliy’s 14-year-old dog, Martin, and trained him for a 30-mile race. When I called Aliy about the 30-below-zero weather, she said, ‘Julie, suit him up and let him go. He’ll love it.’ I have a picture of him coming in at the finish line with all four feet off the ground and happy.”
Through the help of good friends and faithful assistants, Julie created Summer Place Kennel in Northern Wisconsin.
“Living in the wilderness with dogs was the frosting on the cake,” Julie said. “What I didn't know was how amazingly strong they were in so many ways that relate to human needs and interests.”
Julie’s time running the kennel and trekking across the landscape taught her profound lessons that eventually filled the pages of her book.
In 2024, Karen Ferris started visiting to help with transportation to and from medical appointments and other errands. Paula Renz later joined the volunteer effort, visiting Julie to provide companionship and conversation.
Karen, who was already providing practical support, eventually got involved in the memoir project too, and her role became crucial as it got further along. At times, Julie struggled to remember basic things, but her friends were able to help her with memories, while organizing the manuscript.
"We needed to make sure the stories had clear through lines," Karen explained. "Both Paula and I had heard her stories many times and we worked together to fill in missing parts and provide cues for Julie or ask questions to get a fuller narrative."
“She had excellent recall about her dogs at that time and loved talking about them. We had lots of laughs,” Paula said.
With Julie on Rainbow Hospice Care’s services, the realization that her time was running short motivated their quick action.
“It’s an understatement to say that they saved the book, because I had a period when I was not well enough to write it,” Julie said. “It is a gift to have them in my life, and they have become some of my closest friends.”
Working on such a personal life story forged a deeper bond between the women.
"She trusted us enough to reveal so much," Paula shared.
Karen echoed the same sentiment.
“Listening to someone's life story is very personal and putting it down on paper seems to make it even more special,” Karen said. “We discussed many things that did not end up in the book—stories that we share together but will not share with anyone else. It creates a close bond, and we all came to trust each other through this process."
Paula even remembers a specific, emotional breakthrough when she came across an essay about Julie closing her kennel and spending those final days with her aging dogs.
"I was in tears and when I was reading it back to her, I was too choked up to get through it," Paula said.
With Karen and Paula’s help, Julie’s finished memoir, titled In Gentler Valleys Roaming: A Memoir of Sled Dogs, was released for purchase on Amazon in August 2025. The whole process took about four to five months. When the book was finally published, the sense of victory was immense.
"I was so excited for her... and I brought her a chocolate shake to celebrate,” Karen said. “I felt a sense of accomplishment, for her and for us, that we had been able to get this done before her illness made it impossible."
Julie hopes her work inspires others to follow their dreams, urging them not to say, "I am going to do it," but to stay in the present and declare: "I am doing it."
For Julie’s friends and supporters, reading the memoir provided a final, powerful insight into her life's work.
"It has been a gift to read the memoir and learn more about what Julie was able to do for herself and so many others,” said Rainbow Nurse Lisa VanLanduyt. “She followed the path of deciphering her own vision and made it a reality."
Years ago, when Julie first spoke about writing a book about her life running a sled dog kennel, it was merely a wish whispered during a time of intense health struggles. Nicole Sommerfeldt, a hospice social worker at Rainbow, first met Julie while she was receiving palliative care services and had often discussed the dream of the book with her. Now, Julie was handing Nicole the finished, published memoir, complete with an Amazon link to purchase a copy.
"I teared up when I saw the book in my hand," Sommerfeldt recalled, feeling the emotional weight of the accomplishment.
The theme of the wild remains a constant in Julie's current life. Now spending most of her time at home, her close connection to the natural world hasn't diminished. She observes the world through her picture window, with her protective cat, Cleo, by her side. Sometimes her Parkinson's manifests in visual hallucinations. But where others might see objects or people, Julie sees gray wolves in the room, a fitting reflection of her life's devotion to the animal kingdom.
"Julie is definitely connected to nature, and is not afraid of it, just awed and inspired,” Paula said. “She has so many stories of bears, deer, wolves, that it is not surprising that her brain might conjure those images for her."
For Julie, her completed memoir, a gentle and kind testament to her life in the wild, is a stunning victory made possible by the quiet dedication of her closest friends. The woman who once led a team of dozens of dogs across the snow now handles her own legacy, inspiring those around her—from her nurse to her caregivers, one of whom stayed up all night to read the book—to believe that when the heart and mind are open, anything is possible.
