BRIDGEWATER — Whatleigh Torsey and her 15 sled dogs were driving home Sunday night from Bear Notch Road in the White Mountains, having just had another banner business day in the backwoods off the Kancamagus Highway, when somehow, somewhere, she lost her sled.

She has been running her business, Barking Brook Sled Dog Adventures, from her truck for the past year, strapping her custom-made $1,800 dog sled on the truck's roof while carting her dogs in wooden kennels in the back. Business has been booming, she said.

But when she pulled into her driveway on Bridgewater Hill Road, the sled was gone. Somewhere on the road home — probably along the Kancamagus, she said — the sled had been blown off the truck.

With the sled went her business. A friend loaned her a nearly identical dog sled for the next two weeks, but after that, she'll have lots of sled dogs, but no dog sled.

“When I got out and saw the sled wasn't there, my heart sank,” said Torsey, a native of New York, who gave up her software engineering job in Boston 12 years ago to become a sled-dog racer and stay-at-home mom with her husband on Bridgewater Mountain.

“I have every day in February booked, but obviously I need my sled,” she said.

Torsey, 44, decided to turn her sled dog racing hobby into a business in January 2011. She had always been a dog lover, and when she moved to New Hampshire, she fell in love with sled dogging.

She bought the sled, built a website and got a license to run her business in the White Mountain National Forest on Sandwich Notch Road and off of Tripoli Road in Thornton.

The lack of significant snowfall in central New Hampshire prompted her to move her business northward to Bear Notch Road, which runs from between the Kancamagus Highway and Crawford Notch Road in Bartlett.

She has been booking sled dog “adventures,” in which she trains customers how to drive the sled and sends them off with the dogs, steadily since November, she said.

Now, she's hoping someone finds her sled and returns it. She's contacted police departments in towns along the Kancamagus and Interstate 93, along the route home. She can be reached via her website at www.barking-brook.com.

“It's a one-of-a-kind sled, and I've made such a huge commitment to my business,” she said.

The sled was tightly attached to the truck, and had never come off before. “All I can figure is it must have fallen off the driver's side at some point,” she said.