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As veteran racer Amanda Byrd whizzed down the trail in the eight-dog event of the Gene’s Chrysler Limited North American Championship Saturday, she was surprised when she heard a strange roar coming from the trees beside her.

Before she knew what was happening, he sled was on its side, her dogs were tangled and she, now laying on the ground, was face-to-snout with an angry moose.

Byrd tried to call her dogs to get going again, but somehow her wheel dogs were behind her and her snowhook was in a tangled mess.

The moose leapt over her and, barely thinking straight, Byrd managed to flip her sled upright, break her snowhook-holder to loosen the hook, and take off away from the snorting beast.

“I’ve never moved faster,” Byrd said. “We were hauling butt to get out of there, but I didn’t feel much like racing anymore.”

She sang to her dogs the entire way back to the finish line at the Jeff Studdert racegrounds to scare away any other wayward moose that might be lurking.

Though she didn’t feel much like racing, Byrd still managed to shave a minute and 40 seconds off her time from Friday. And even though she wanted to scratch from the LNAC when she and the team got back to the truck, she said she’ll return today to “face her demons.”

With the weather turning a bit cooler than the record-breaking high temperatures Friday, teams in all classes posted significantly faster times on Saturday.

Becky Voris, Kris Rasey and Kim Wells, who are all members of the Anchorage Skijor Club, all knocked several minutes off their Day 1 times in the skijoring events.

“Everybody picked up about three minutes across the board because it was 12 degrees cooler,” said Voris who raced in the one-dog.

“The trail was a lot faster. Yesterday, it was real sticky and the dogs had work much harder,” added Rasey.

“I waxed in Anchorage before I came here and used the wrong wax and it was like having fresh dog doo-doo on the bottom of my skis.”

The trio of friendly competitors have competed in LNAC for several years now and have never seen weather quite like what they’re experiencing this time around.

But for Rasey and Wells, who were just six seconds apart on Saturday in the two-dog skijor, the gloves are coming off today.

“Her neck’s going to be so sore from watching for me behind her,” joked Rasey.

“I’m going to drop prime rib on the trail behind me so her dogs will stop,” Wells quipped back with a laugh.

In the eight-dog class, Rob Downey took the top spot from Christian Taveau and after Day 2, holds a faster total time by just 8 seconds.

And even though Stacy Lanser had a faster run Saturday in the four-dog class, Fairbanks’ Jennifer Probert is still holding on to top spot in that category as well as in the six-dog division.

No stranger to being amongst the winners, Probert does have one noticeable difference in her team compared to the other ultra-competitive broods: Her dogs are humongous.

They look more like a team of Yukon Quest dogs ready to tackle the steep side of Eagle Summit, rather than a champion sprint team. But the breedings, Probert said, have produced several 60-65-pound dogs that can handle speeds of 20 mph and beyond, while staying injury free.

Like the majority of sprinters, Probert’s dogs are part husky, part Greyhound and/or part German Shorthaired Pointer (referred to simply as hounds), but her dogs are significantly larger.

“We work with these dogs all year long; we free-run them, swim with them and I do a lot of physical therapy,” Probert said of her injury-prevention methods. “I would worry about some of these big dogs if we were going further, and when we’re out there I’m really watching them closely.”

Along with the sleek, streamlined hounds — big or little — there are also an abundance of fluffier dogs racing at this year’s LNAC.

Fairbanks’ Lynn Orbison had a mixed bag of huskies and hounds, rescued and hand-raised dogs in her eight-dog team. She shaved over a minute and a half off her time Saturday on the 10.6-mile course.

Orbison knows she’s not a contender for the top spots this weekend, so she’s taking it easy on the trail, stopping frequently and letting the dogs set the pace.

“Every time I race now, I go to the teams going out behind me — I used to go to the teams in front of me when I had better dogs — and ask them what they want me to do when they catch me, ‘cause I know they’re going to catch me,” Orbison said.

Edie Forest, also of Fairbanks, decided to give her older dogs a chance at the LNAC. On Saturday, Forest raced a 10- and a 9-year-old in the four-dog class. They even managed to pass another team.

Forest is also racing in the six-dog class with some younger dogs and is in 11th spot after two days.

With the sport of sprint mushing always evolving, the dogs of the fast track are getting smaller and faster and, like any sport, change is necessary to keep a competitive edge, said Willow musher Greg Sellentin. Sellentin finished Day 2 in fifth position in the eight-dog class and in the four-dog class.

“People starting using the hounds in the mid-90s when the Alaskan husky became almost a purebred dog because a lot of the genealogy of the top dogs went back to just a few dogs so mushers were dealing with a limited gene pool,” Sellentin said. “The resulting mix is a sled dog with a hybrid vigor, some of the qualities from the pointer, which are heat resistance and speed, and then the desire to run from the Alaskan husky. That created a dog that’s perfect for sprint racing.”

But regardless of size, hair length or bloodlines, some folks came out to the track just to watch the sled dogs do what they love: Run fast.

Mary and Harvey Reis are vacationing in Alaska from Cincinnati and read about the LNAC on the Internet, so they decided to take in their first dog sled race on Saturday.

“It’s such a great variety of dogs, they’re not all alike,” said Harvey.

“Some look like Dobermans,” added Mary. “It’s just fascinating.”

The final day of racing in the 2008 LNAC starts at 11 a.m. today at the Studdert Racegrounds.