EAGLE, Alaska Thanks to this year's Yukon Quest, Dawson City's Peter Ledwidge will now be called Mr. Sub, says friend and fellow musher Ed Hopkins.

'We were in Carmacks and Peter pulled a sub out of his pants and asked me if I wanted a bite,' Hopkins said with a laugh.

'I said, No thanks,' and ever since then, Peter's been Mr. Sub or the Subway. Who knows what's going to come out of his pants next? I don't even want to go there.'

Ledwidge said having to stop in his hometown was tough on his dogs.

Coming into Dawson, he was going to stop in at a friend's cabin but changed his mind. It was a decision that meant nothing to the dogs, as they're used to stopping there on training runs. The dogs turned into his friend's driveway anyway.

Ledwidge's dogs also knocked over a bunch of trail markers trying to make their way back to the Ledwidge household.

'They thought they were home,' Ledwidge said.

Instead of going to the Dawson checkpoint, the dogs tried to take Ledwidge to where he normally parks his truck when in town.

Luckily, Hopkins drove by and Ledwidge's dogs decided to chase him to the checkpoint.

On the plus side, once in the Dawson campground, Ledwidge let his nine veterans loose, and they went straight to the tent where they know they sleep.

'They just knew that they had a nice huge bed of straw and that they would get pampered for 36 hours,' Ledwidge said.

Earlier on in the race, his dogs had kennel cough, which he thought might end his race, but by Dawson, the animals were getting better.

Ledwidge believes because he vaccinated for kennel cough, his dogs only got a slight case of it.

'But if I hadn't vaccinated, I would probably be out of the race now,' he said. 'Something like that would have just been part of the Quest, but it just sucks when it happens.'

When he scratched in 2002, he thought: 'Man, I could have gone to a nice hot country for two months with this kind of money that we spend on this race.'

Ledwidge said all his mental energy goes into the Quest, so when something like kennel cough threatens to shut him down, 'It's a real blow. But so far, the gods have been with me.'

Ledwidge, being the hometown boy, received a real welcome in Dawson.

'When I came in, it was just like a pit crew in the Indy. I had all these people working on my dogs,'Ledwidge said about the help he received.

He called it very lifting to see his two children at the Jack London restaurant while he ate two breakfasts last Friday morning.

'They just came up and gave me a big hug,' he said.

Ledwidge said it's tough for some mushers to be away from their families.

Bruce Langmaid, who scratched in Dawson, told Ledwidge he didn't want to talk about his family while out on the trail.

'He told me it was because he'd just get depressed,' said Ledwidge. 'This race is a head trip. It's really hard. You have serious mood swings just because you're getting one or two hours of sleep a day.'

From Whitehorse to Dawson, Ledwidge received five hours of shut-eye.

'I try to sleep more, but when you're sore or too wired, you can't.'

Coming into Eagle, Ledwidge said the warm weather, at 6 C, was a little too hot for the dogs, but his team is doing well even if it's running a little more slowly in the balmy weather.

Musher Dan Kaduce, from Chatanika, Alaska, said the warm temperature is a nice change to previous years, where the mercury dropped below minus 40.

Ledwidge said Dawson to Circle, Alaska, is his favourite part of the race, because his team typically does well on that stretch of the trail.

He was 12th coming into Eagle.