About Squid Acres

About Squid Acres Kennel

Squid Acres Kennel is a competitive sled dog racing kennel and tour company owned and operated by Paige Drobny and Cody Strathe. They are currently located in Cantwell near Denali National Park and at the Susitna Advenure Lodge at mile 77 od the scenic Denali Highway.

In 2004, Cody, Paige, Yogi and Keetna started hanging out together. Paige and Yogi soon moved to Fairbanks, AK so that Paige could go to graduate school in fisheries. Cody and Keetna soon followed, so that Cody could go to graduate school for archaeology. In Fairbanks, they bought their first place and it was affectionately named Squid Acres after Paige’s masters thesis project on squid in the Bering sea. Soon after, Cody built us a sled, Paige found us some dogs and yada, yada, yada… we have a sled dog kennel and the name has stuck. Our story together is the best one, but like the dogs, we each have our own interesting story.

Paige Drobny

Paige was born with a love of animals. Her parents couldn’t keep the frogs and crickets and small animals out of the house. She got her first pet, a cat, at 3 and there were a slew of house pets and barn animals that came after that. Paige went to college at Virginia Tech and received a Biology degree. After lots of traveling and various jobs, Paige bought a camper van and she and Yogi, the black lab team manager, hit the road to Alaska. They landed in Seward and that is where they ran into another like minded pair, Cody and Keetna. Paige got her masters degree in fisheries biology at UAF and has since started her own company, Spearfish Research, doing biological consulting.

Cody Strathe

Cody grew up on a large cattle, pig, and horse farm in Iowa. Riding horses and fishing in the local creek was a great way to grow up. In middle school he moved to Wisconsin and began competing in little britches and high school rodeos and exploring the northwoods of Wisconsin. He went to college at UWSP and continued his love of the outdoors by receiving a Natural Resource Management degree. He hightailed it to Alaska and found a great spot in Seward where he found his first husky, Keetna. Once he moved to Fairbanks he received a masters degree in Anthropology / Archaeology and spent the summers surveying for unknown prehistoric sites in remote Arctic locations. He began building dogsleds and started his own company, DogPaddle Designs, building custom dogsleds for other mushers. He now bounces between helping Paige with fish work, sled building, archaeology projects and running dogs.