CPA trades skyscrapers for sled dogs.
It was time for Anastasia Gill to leave Houston.
As a certified public accountant for two major accounting firms since her late-20s, she felt that creeping, desperate feeling of burnout settling in.
“Both were really stressful jobs. I would eat junk and had no time to exercise. I’d work from 8 a.m. to God knows when,” Gill, 33, said. “I was getting burned out anyway and thinking of taking six months off and doing something else.”
So, she let her life go to the dogs — literally. Since Oct. 20, Gill has been in Cook County, Minn., working with sled dogs and mushers to prepare for the 2020 mushing season.
Last summer, Gill was assigned a project that took her to Minneapolis. On a rare weekend getaway, she traveled up to Cook County where she was the only person to sign up for a daylong canoe trip with Frank Moe, a former Minnesota legislator who has been raising and racing sled dogs for 20 years.
Cook County is on the U.S.-Canada border and is situated on the upper west portion of Lake Superior. It can snow every month from November to April in Minnesota, and there are even unconfirmed reports of “mysterious July 4th snows,” according to the Minnesota Climatology Working Group.
As she enjoyed the reprieve from Houston’s humid hustle and bustle, she discussed her work situation with Moe. She said she was toying with idea of moving to Central or South America and learning Spanish for a few months. She just needed an escape.
Moe told her he would need help that winter with his dog kennel.
He asked: “Why don’t you come stay with me and my wife, help us with the dogs, races and the mushers?”
Gill’s first thought was that she couldn’t do it.
“It’s too cold,” she said. “But then I realized that I would regret saying no.”
The handler work at Moetown Kennels is physical and exhausting. The hours depend on the needs of 40 dogs and a pig named Petunia. The average temperature is between 1 and 21 degrees Fahrenheit in January.
But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that came along at exactly the right moment.
“To me, this isn’t a permanent thing. I needed a break, and I get to do something really cool,” she said. “It’s work, and it’s challenging in a different way than my old job. It’s much more physically challenging, so I’m in the best shape of my life being here a couple of months.”
In May 2019, the World Health Organization classified burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases. Burnout is not classified as a medical condition, but is caused by job-related stress. It it is also described as a contributing factor to depression and anxiety in other areas of life.
“Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” according to WHO. “It is characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.”
In Gill’s case, she didn’t realize that she was approaching total burnout until it was imminent. It’s not that she wanted to just quit working altogether, she said. She just wanted to stop feeling like she was “one day away from completely burning out.”
According to the accounting firm Deloitte, in a survey of 1,000 full-time U.S. professionals, 77 percent said they “have experienced employee burnout at their current job.” More than half cited more than one occurrence.
The rate is even higher among millennials like Gill, according to the 2015 survey by Deloitte, which found 84 percent of that generation have experienced burnout at their current job.
For nearly three months, Gill has helped prepare the dogs for the first race of the season, this Saturday. Moe will participate in six races during an abbreviated season. Gill knew it would be different from the 9-to-5 world she was coming from, but she didn’t know exactly how.
“I’ve always loved animals, especially dogs, so that part wasn’t hard,” she said. “But there are 40 dogs here, so the first time I came out, I got overwhelmed. (Moe) was taking me around, introducing me to each dog, and I knew I wouldn’t remember their names. Some are super hyper, some a little more calm; some wouldn’t even come near me and didn’t want to be around strangers.”
First thing in the morning, she scoops the poop. Then she spends time playing with or petting each dog. When it’s time to train, harnessing the dogs turns into a wrestling match.
It’s not all about the dogs though. Gill witnessed her first real snowfall and experienced what it’s like when it sticks to the ground for longer than two days. She calls it a true winter wonderland — “like a postcard.”
“In Houston if it’s below 30 degrees, the whole city shuts down, but here, you have to run errands and do dog stuff,” she said. “It’s fun having the snow because the dogs love it. The better the snow is, the more sled training runs we can go on.”
Gill’s fresh perspective of winter life in Cook County led to the development of a podcast on 90.7 FM WTIP North Shore Community Radio called “Sled Dogs, Cold Toes, and a Gal From Texas.” She has recorded six 10-minute episodes so far.
Staci Drouillard, development director for WTIP, said Gill’s show fits in the station’s mission to build community and honor the voices of the people who live in the area. She called the show’s development organic in a “very smalltown, rural sort of way.”
The team thought a mushing podcast would resonate since the area is situated in the middle of sled-dog country, Drouillard said. Initially, she approached Moe to be the voice of the show, but he had a better idea: the CPA from Texas.
“We heard this amazing tale of how she packed in a job that was causing her wear and tear, how she met (Moe) on a boundary waters excursion, and he talked her into being a handler,” Drouillard said. “We met with her just one time, sent her home with a recorder with basic instructions and said her story and her voice would be the best way to produce it.”
The podcast has been “pure gold,” Drouillard said, adding the station and community love the project.
“Her voice is so clear, it’s like she’s been doing this her entire life,” Drouillard said. “To experience her first snow right along with her is breathtaking, especially as someone born and raised in northern Minnesota and grew up with snow.”
To listen to “Sled Dogs, Cold Toes, and a Gal From Texas,” visit wtip.org.