In 2002, Christopher McDougall swapped city living in Philadelphia for a remote log cabin in Pennsylvania Amish country.
He and his family had a few farm animals, a cat, some goats and a “starter sheep,” and they wanted to add a donkey to the mix.
When McDougall heard about a 200-pound specimen who needed rescuing from a hoarder’s home, he thought he’d be bringing home an oversized pet.
But then he laid eyes on the beast.
“It looked dazed, more like a moldy toy hauled out of a basement than a living creature,” McDougall writes in “Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero” (Knopf), out now. And its hooves had been so badly neglected “he could barely walk.”
McDougall adopted him anyway and named him Sherman.
“We didn’t care anymore about getting a pet,” he writes. “All we cared about was getting him out of there.”
McDougall didn’t know anything about rehabilitating a donkey, but he was an expert on one topic: running. His 2009 bestseller “Born to Run” inspired the barefoot-running movement.
“My gut told me that the one thing that would save Sherman . . . was movement,” he writes.
But whenever McDougall tried to jog Sherman, the donkey hesitated. His crippled hooves, which had to be trimmed with a hacksaw, could barely stand on even slightly uneven terrain.
“The more I tried to boss him around, the more he would resist,” McDougall writes. “There was no way I was going to out-donkey a donkey.”
So McDougall brought in running partners, first a grumpy white goat named Chili Dog and then a pair of donkeys named Flower and Matilda, along with a couple of human trainers. The goal, McDougall writes, was to “combine their strengths and weaknesses into one big Swiss Army knife of a support system” — and the team brought Sherman out of his shell.
As Sherman got stronger and more confident, McDougall decided on an ambitious goal. They would compete in the annual World Championship Pack Burro Race, a legendary contest that’s been hosted in Fairplay, Colo., since 1949. Donkeys and their human partners, who run beside the animals, race up to the 13,185-foot Mosquito Pass — nearly half the height of Mount Everest — and back.
The Fairplay donkeys are “all tough, mountain-hardened beasts who could run for days and shrug off a tsunami,” McDougall writes. The strategy for Sherman “was to trot slowly and be happy with finishing dead last, as long as we finished.”
After less than a year of training, the day of the big burro race finally arrived: July 31, 2016.
As they joined the other donkeys at the starting point, Sherman was so excited that “his fur seemed to be standing on end.”
At first, Sherman was “so enthralled to be flowing along in a donkey parade, he was nearly bouncing.” But at the halfway point, stocked with water bottles for humans and a trough for donkeys, Sherman balked.
As Flower and Matilda moved on, McDougall knew only one thing would motivate Sherman.
“Let’s go,” he announced to the group. “We’re leaving him.”
Sure enough, Sherman finally gave up and raced towards them.
During the final stretch, they “clawed and scrambled our way up a slippery bank, our feet churning through crushed dirt as soft as sand.” And then they saw it, the finish line.
“Ready for your victory parade, Sherman?” McDougall asked.
Sherman finished in the top 30 out of 52 starters. It was a remarkable achievement for a donkey once terrified to leave his pen.
But, McDougall concludes, “Sherman was born with the badlands in his blood.”
Although Sherman is now retired from burro racing, he still lives on McDougall’s farm and is as feisty as ever. Sometimes he’ll throw open the gate with his teeth.
“Then he’ll lead all the animals out to escape and wander down to the road. It’s almost like he’s looking for his next race.”