Taking Balto over Pluto

HANSON -- It was a little over a year ago, during one of young Rachael Baker's routine visits to her cystic fibrosis clinic, when she was told by her longtime nurse that she could make a wish for anything she wanted and that there was an organization that would try to make it happen.

Think long and hard about it, she was told. But the truth was, Rachael Baker knew exactly what she wanted the second she was asked.

A couple of months later, the nurse, Monica Ulles, asked her again, and Rachael told her. Ulles's first reaction: ''I was stunned. I had to ask her what it meant."

You see, nearly 50 percent of the sick kids who are invited to take part in the extraordinary Make-A-Wish Foundation program ask for a trip to Disney World. These are kids who face life-threatening diseases and the constant invasions and indignities that go with them.

So, they pine for normalcy -- a few days in sunny Florida, a picture with Goofy, a ride on Space Mountain, maybe a side trip to SeaWorld. Other kids ask to meet famous athletes. Hawaiian trips and Caribbean cruises are popular requests.

Not for Rachael Baker. Oh, no. She, along with her 10-year-old twin sister, Abigail, suffers from cystic fibrosis, a life-shortening, multi-system disease that requires constant treatment. The Baker girls didn't realize they had it until their brother, Joshua, was born with it, and they were tested. Now, all three kids endure daily physical therapy, fistfuls of medications with every serving of food, constant trips to the Mass. General Cystic Fibrosis Clinic, blood work, and throat cultures.

Around Thanksgiving, the phone rang at the Bakers' Hanson house with the news that Rachael's fondest wish had been granted. The entire Baker family was being sent on an all-expenses paid trip to . . . Anchorage, Alaska. In the winter. To the Iditarod.

Picture the frozen smile on her mother's face -- and I do mean frozen.

You see, Rachael Baker has an obsession, and it's dogs. She can't have one yet because of the respiratory problems caused by the disease. But she reads about them constantly. She watches movies about them religiously. On a recent trip to New York, the one sight she had to see was a Central Park statue of a sled dog named Balto.

For years, she's followed the Iditarod Sled Dog Race like most kids follow the Red Sox, bookmarking pages on the Internet dedicated to her favorite mushers and writing papers on the race for her fourth-grade class. ''It's a little odd," concedes her mother, Kelly.

Not to Rachael. Sitting at her dining room table yesterday, she explained that the race traces its origins to January 1925, when a crucial serum had to be shipped from Anchorage to Nome to fight a diphtheria outbreak. A dogsled relay led by 20 mushers trekked 674 miles in temperatures that dipped to 40 below zero to deliver the medication in just six days.

''I want to be a musher when I grow up," Rachael declared. ''You get to hang out with the dogs and be around lots of them."

The Bakers leave Monday for a week, and Rachael said the mushers' pre-race banquet would be a highlight of the trip. Even better, she'll take a ceremonial first ride with a dog team. As she speaks, she begins many of her sentences with the word ''well" and has an effortless capacity to make you feel like an idiot for not knowing more about, say, Jeff King, the three-time Iditarod champion who will take her through Anchorage on his sleigh at the start of the race.

The rest of the family is excited. Well, excited may be too strong a word. ''I'm not exactly the cold weather mother, but that's fine," said Kelly Baker. ''It will certainly be an experience."

Said Ulles, the nurse: ''I can't wait to see these pictures. I can hear Kelly saying, 'Oh, why can't we be swimming with dolphins?' "

Because her kids aren't exactly normal, which is one of the unique joys of being a parent in the Baker family. Anchorage, here they come.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.