Susan Butcher, 51; Iditarod Dog Sled Champion Racer

Susan Butcher, 51, whose four victories in the grueling Iditarod dog sled race across Alaska made her a symbol of self-reliance and perseverance, died of leukemia Aug. 5 in Seattle.

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which runs for 10 to 17 days over a course of more than 1,150 miles, suggested the most extreme challenges and privations of frontier life, and Ms. Butcher's triumph over its hardships made her a hero to many.

As a first-grader, Ms. Butcher once recalled, she had scrawled the words, "I hate the city. I love the country," and when she later read of the first Iditarod, she said she told herself, "I'm going to go up there and run that race."

In an interview with the Academy of Achievement posted on the organization's Web site, she said, "It never did occur to me that this was something a woman shouldn't do."

About three years ago, she was found to have a bone marrow disease that sometimes turns into leukemia, one of her physicians told the Seattle Times. An acute form of leukemia was diagnosed in December.

Physician Jan Abkowitz told the Times that chemotherapy brought about a remission. But, he said, Ms. Butcher, fearing its return, chose to undergo a stem-cell transplant.

In a complication, the transplanted cells attacked her body. Last month, doctors learned that the leukemia had returned in an aggressive form.

She died at the University of Washington Medical Center.

Speaking in an interview of the bond between her and her dogs, Ms. Butcher said the "relationship is extremely close. They are my friends, my family and my workmates. They get my attention around the clock. They are of total importance to me because -- certainly during those years that I lived alone -- they were often my only friends."

Even in later times, after she married, she said, "The dogs are still often my closest friends. And then they are my livelihood."

An organization called the Sled Dog Action Coalition has criticized treatment of dogs in the Iditarod, but Ms. Butcher always emphasized the importance of tending to the needs of the dogs.

"You have to be very selfless in your dedication to your dogs," she told the Los Angeles Times.

"When you come into a checkpoint, although there may be a wood stove to warm your feet by, you stay outside; you take care of your dogs, get them bedded down and fed."

Ms. Butcher was born in Boston and once described herself as dyslexic without an affinity for formal classroom education. She moved to Alaska at age 20 out of a love for animals and the wilderness.

She first competed in the Iditarod in 1978. For several consecutive years starting in 1980, she finished in the top five. Her team's collision with a moose set her back in 1985, but she came back to win each of the next three years' events.

Ultimately, she finished fifth or better in a dozen Iditarods.

Ms. Butcher's last Iditarod was in 1994; she gave up racing to have children. She had lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, with her daughters Tekla and Chisana, and her husband, David Monson, who was also a sled dog racer.