Susan Howlet Butcher (born December 26, 1954) is a dog musher who rose to fame when she became the second woman to win the Iditarod dogsled race in 1986, and went on to become the second four-time winner in 1990, and the first to win four out of five sequential years.

Butcher grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, a lover of dogs and the outdoors. She studied at Colorado State University and ultimately became a veterinary technician. To pursue her love of dogsled racing and breeding huskies, she moved to the Wrangell Mountains area of Alaska.

Living in Alaska, Susan Butcher began training to compete in the Iditarod sled-dog race, a grueling 1,049-mile race through arctic blizzard conditions across the Alaska wilderness, which tests the endurance of both mushers and dogs over the course of one to two weeks. After placing in several Iditarods, Butcher was forced to withdraw early in the 1985 when two of her dogs were killed by a moose, and six others were severely injured. Libby Riddles, a relative newcomer, braved a blizzard and became the first woman to win the Iditarod that year.