Butcher was known as a focused and confident competitor, who loved her dogs, and insisted they remain fit and disciplined.

"Anything she did she'd do with real intensity," said Joe Runyan, who broke Butcher's three-year winning streak in 1989. "She was really able to focus on the job and that's what made her really good at her sport."

Runyan said the rivalry was always good-natured and that Butcher was more willing than many mushers to share dog-care tips and training methods. During recent Iditarods, she would fly along the trail to chat with old opponents and visit the many friends she had in the Alaska Native villages that serve as checkpoints.

About three years ago, Butcher was diagnosed with polycythemia vera, a rare disease that causes the bone marrow to produce excess red-blood cells. In a small percentage of patients, that disease becomes acute leukemia.

A series of chemotherapy treatments put her leukemia into remission. But Butcher knew it would return, and "she wanted to take the chance of a cure," Abkowitz said. Butcher opted for a stem-cell transplant with an experimental regimen.

The transplant resulted in a serious complication known as graft-vs.-host disease: The transplanted cells attacked her body. Late in July, a routine sample of her bone marrow revealed the leukemia had come back.

On Butcher's Web site, where her husband and others have detailed Butcher's treatment, her husband said doctors gave them two options: Go home and be with her family, or start over with new rounds of chemotherapy.

"We know the path ahead will not be easy and the dangers are great, but the first option is not an option for us. Susan has always been a fighter and if there is a chance that she could be with her girls to see them grow up, she will take it, and she did."

Saturday evening, Monson said his family was "deeply grateful and moved by the incredible outpouring of support we've had this last three months from the people of Seattle."

People gave them a place to stay, gave them rides to the hospital and "left meals on our doorstep without saying who did it, and took in our children when they needed it," Monson said. "Everybody in this town should be proud of the place they live."

Despite Butcher's accomplishments as a musher, she was most proud of being "the best mom she could be," Monson said, struggling with tears. "That trumped everything else she did in life. She was so proud of her girls."

Susan Butcher

Susan Butcher captured world-wide attention in winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race four times, but often said her proudest achievement was being a mother.

Whatever she tackled, perseverance was her forte. The woman who once said, "I do not know the word 'quit.' Either I never did it, or I have abolished it," was determined to conquer her leukemia, just as she had triumphed over the grueling 1,100-mile race from Anchorage to Nome.

Despite her fighting spirit, though, she couldn't overcome the cascade of medical complications that eventually overtook her.

Butcher, 51, died Saturday afternoon, August 5th, 2006 at the University of Washington Medical Center, where she had undergone a stem-cell transplant about two months ago.

When Butcher first developed leukemia, late last year, she worried about who was going to take care of her beloved dogs in Alaska while she got treatment, said Dr. Jan Abkowitz, head of the division of hematology at the UW and one of a team of doctors who cared for Butcher during her treatment there through the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

"This was a truly amazing person," Abkowitz said. "She was extremely insightful and sensitive and exciting. She just had an amazing way of communicating with people and inspiring them."

For years, women and men around the world were drawn to the adventures of Butcher, a young woman struggling to win the classic (wo)man-against-nature race, pitting mushers against Alaska's blizzards, wildlife and frostbite. In 1985, she was forced to withdraw from the race when a rampaging moose killed two of her dogs and severely injured six others. That year, Libby Riddles braved a storm to become the first woman to win the Iditarod.

But Butcher came back strong the next year, winning the race. And she won again in 1987, 1988 and 1990.

"What she did is brought this race to an audience that had never been aware of it before simply because of her personality," Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said.

Butcher inspired a popular slogan: "Alaska -- Where Men are Men and Women Win the Iditarod."

Butcher, who helped drive the first sled-dog team to the top of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley in 1979, retired from the Iditarod in 1994 when she decided to have children with her husband, attorney and fellow musher David Monson. They had two daughters, Tekla and Chisana.