Mike Dillingham - Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers: Amazing, Legendary Dogs of the North and Idatrod Tales

The dogs whimpering was too soft to be heard from the street. Outside the old storefront, the party decade was roaring not just in Los Angeles, but across the country.

It was the wild, jazzy, fun-filled Roaring Twenties. Flappers in short skirts were kicking their legs and twirling the long strands of pearls they wore around their necks. The economy was booming lots of people were making money and spending it on having fun.

But there was no party going on at the storefront: no jumping, bellowing, yipping. No running, falling, tumbling. No enthusiastic barking and not one note of joyful husky singing.

The converted store was a dime museum, a cheap sideshow wedged among gambling dens, illegal drinking dives and other sleazy joints. For 10 cents, visitors mostly out-of-town businessmen could ogle an animal curiosity seven famous Alaska sled dogs.

The dogs were Balto, Fox, Alaska Slim, Billy, Sye, Old Moctoc and Tillie, the only female.

Just two years earlier, in February 1925, the team had been heralded as heroes on the front pages of the world's newspapers for saving the children of Nome, Alaska, from a deadly diphtheria epidemic.

In Washington, D.C., the U.S. Senate had suspended official business to listen to stories, poems and songs about the dogs and their young driver, Gunnar Kaasen.

But now it was February 1927. Five of the team's original 12 dogs were gone, and Kaasen had mysteriously disappeared.

The seven remaining dogs were has-beens even Balto, the bear-like leader with the cute white markings that was known to children across America.

Thousands of families had Balto bookends and used Balto dog food dishes or cat food dishes to feed their pets. But did they think of Balto?

The brave dogs had been forgotten some would say, shamelessly left to die. Small, hot and windowless, the dime museum was no place for dogs. But it was a nightmare for huskies, which are most comfortable in temperatures of 10 to 20 below zero.

In Nome, the team had lived like other sled dogs in a huge kennel in the middle of a snow-covered field. The snow was deep and made the dogs want to jump and run. The air was crisp and crystal-clear. It sharpened their already keen senses of taste and smell.

But there was no fresh air in the dime museum, not a ripple of breeze or tiny icebox blast of chill. The stifling conditions were draining the dogs life force, almost as if some great invisible moose, their dreaded enemy back in Alaska, was slowly stomping them senseless.

After weeks of confinement, the dogs were thin, weak and miserable. Their lustrous fur had dulled, and their once strong pulling muscles had shrunk. One by one, they had sunk into a lethargy, a state between wakefulness and sleeping.

There was no stimulation of any kind, nothing to rouse their spirits. So they lay dreaming of faraway Alaska: of soft, sub-Arctic sunlight, sub-zero temperatures, the tantalizing scents of reindeer, fox and rabbit.

They had come such a long way since the life-saving serum run. Now, they were unable to save their own lives. Tied to their beloved sled in a musty back room of the museum, they wondered: Is this the end of the trail?