Newry, Maine ? Twenty-three Yukon huskies are frantically barking and jumping up and down and sideways, their born-to-run bodies eager to pull the dogsleds hitched behind them.

But the barking comes to a halt — almost as if somebody turned a switch to off — when the musher releases the sled’s brake and issues the gentle commands of “tighten up” and “let’s go.”

The sled pulls forward and the yelping is replaced with the whoosh of the cold wind and the swish of the sled carving the snow. The dogs have happy grins and their tongues flop crazily as they pant from the exertion of pulling a 10-foot sled with two people standing on its back runners.

Hardly a word is spoken among the people on this mushing day trip as four sleds are whisked across frozen, snow-covered Umbagog Lake on the Maine-New Hampshire border. The mountains of the Mahoosuc Range loom to the east.

If a day isn’t long enough, Mahoosuc Guide Service in Newry also offers overnight trips where customers camp in shelters in the woods. For the hard-core, guide company owners Polly Mahoney and Kevin Slater will take people on mushing adventures of up to 11 days in northern Quebec with Cree Indian guides.

Mushing may conjure up images of Alaska’s Iditarod sled-dog race or Robert Peary — minus eight toes lost to frostbite from an earlier trip — crossing the Arctic to reach the North Pole.

These days, however, mushing is as much for the tourist as it is for the racer or adventurer. Dogsled tourism has risen as an industry all its own, offering getaways for those looking for a change from the usual winter sports such as downhill or cross-country skiing, snowshoeing or snowmobiling.

Karen Pritchard of Little Falls, N.J., took a day to go mushing during a vacation at nearby Sunday River ski resort with two friends from New Jersey. She had been considering mushing for several years since discovering Mahoosuc Guide Service on the Internet.

“I had to do it while I was here,” Pritchard said. “Dogs and being outside in the winter are things I love.”

Mushing used to be associated with the frontier wilderness, and “only nut cases and desperate people” did it, said Deirdre Helfferich, managing editor of Mushing magazine in Ester, Alaska. “But now it’s much more of a mainstream sport.”

Nobody knows for sure, but it’s thought there are scores if not hundreds of dogsled operators in at least 20 states. Not surprisingly, Alaska has the most; the town of Ely, Minn., which has a dozen commercial mushing operations with fewer than 4,000 residents, bills itself as “Sled Dog Capital of the U.S.”

Mahoney, who once lived in the Yukon Territory bush mushing dogs and wrangling horses, said her customers came in all ages and had a variety of backgrounds.

“The one thing in common is they love dogs and are looking for outdoor adventure,” she said.

Judy Allen, of Bar Harbor, Maine, is here on her first sled ride and compares it to sailing.

“It was just so quiet and so beautiful,” Allen said.

Paul Schurke was one of the first people to open a commercial dogsledding company when he started Wintergreen Dog Sled Lodge in 1979 in Ely, Minn. He said mushing had grown so because people — dog lovers in particular — realize it allows them to be in the winter wilderness.

All of Wintergreen’s trips are booked far ahead of time, including the annual spring trip Schurke leads to northwest Greenland, where mushers sled through polar Eskimo villages and travel and live with the natives.

“We could offer twice as many trips as time allows and fill them all,” he said.