The Village Improvement Society and the Craftsbury Public Library present the movie Underdog at the Craftsbury Library on Friday, March 15, at 7pm. This screening is free, with unreserved seating for 99 people. Underdog tells the story of Doug Butler, a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer with an offbeat passion—dog mushing. Doug's ease with cows, dogs and people is a joy to behold. And when he trains his team of mutts on the family farm with a dream to compete at the world championships in Alaska, his exuberance seems to erase the tired lines on his face.

Yet the demands of being a family farmer are constant, and Doug has never once left his cows for more than a few days. Keenly aware of the fate of the other farms, Doug has managed for years to play one creditor off the next to survive another season. But with the accumulated debt now insurmountable and Doug's thoughts plunging into depression and suicide, his dogs offer solace. And perhaps a way out. On a cold March morning Doug pulls out of his driveway in a truck carrying 22 dogs, waving goodbye to the only world he's ever known. He's bound for Alaska. The journey will prepare him for what he'll confront when he gets back—the sale of his farm and a race to craft a new destiny.

Meticulously captured over the course of a decade, UNDERDOG paints a portrait of Doug Butler as he puts a curiously optimistic twist on the kinds of family farm tragedies that have so marked American rural life. In the era of the pandemic, the resonance of Doug's journey extends to all who have faced down loneliness, isolation and the struggle to make sense of forces beyond control. Read more about the film at https://www.underdogfilm.org.

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