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Nathaniel Wilder / Reuters
Gerald Sousa's team charges down the trail at the start of the Iditarod in Willow, Alaska, on March 3.
Nathaniel Wilder / Reuters
Four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King greets fans as his team charges down the trail at the start on March 3.
By Rachel D'Oro, The Associated Press: Dogs aching to run bolted out of the chute Sunday to launch the 41st running of Alaska's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Now 65 teams will be making their way through punishing wilderness toward the finish line in Nome on Alaska's western coast 1,000 miles away.
The Iditarod kicked off Saturday with an 11-mile jaunt through Anchorage, 50 miles south of the real starting line in the town of Willow. Sunday's event marked the competitive portion of the race. Read the full story.
Nathaniel Wilder / Reuters
Peter Kaiser's team charges down the trail during the start on March 3.
Nathaniel Wilder / Reuters
A dog from Jeff King's team leaps into the air before it hits the trail on March 3.
Rachel D'Oro / AP
Dogs wait to run in the race on March 3.
Nathaniel Wilder / Reuters
The lead dogs of musher Brent Sass race down 4th Avenue at the ceremonial start to the Iditarod in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, on March 2.
Previously on PhotoBlog:
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All our prayers for the gallant pups and mushers.
Iditarod dogs suffer horrendous cruelty every day of their lives. Mushers have drowned, shot, bludgeoned and dragged many dogs to death. For example, Iditarod musher Dave Olesen drowned a litter of newborn puppies. Another musher got rid of unwanted puppies by tying them in a bag and tossing the bag in a creek. Mushers even have a saying about not breeding dogs unless they can drown them: “Those who cannot drown should not breed.”
Terrible things happen to dogs during the Iditarod. This includes: death, bloody diarrhea, paralysis, frostbite (where it hurts the most!), bleeding ulcers, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases,
kennel cough, broken bones, torn muscles and extreme stress. At least 142 dogs have died in the race, including four dogs who froze to death in the brutal cold.
Veterinary care during the Iditarod is poor. In the 2012 race, one of Lance Mackey's male dogs ripped out all of his 16 toenails trying to get to a female who was in heat. This type of broken toenail is extremely painful. Mackey, a four-time Iditarod winner, said he was too stubborn to leave this dog at a checkpoint and veterinarians allowed Mackey to continue to race him. Imagine the agony the dog was forced to endure.
Here's another example: Veterinarians have allowed dogs with kennel cough to race in the Iditarod even though dogs with this disease should be kept warm and given lots of rest. Strenuous exercise can cause lung damage, pneumonia and even death. To make matters worse, kennel cough is a highly contagious disease that
normally lasts from 10 to 21 days.
FOR MORE FACTS: Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org
Oh, nonsense. You're the person who has/used to have a website showing a husky curled up on dry snow with bloooooood running down the screen, aren't you? How many of these poor, poor abused huskies have you adopted so far? Have you ever found any? Oh, and did you know that one of those dogs curled up on the snow will register a temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit on its relatively lightly furred stomach while the temperature all around it is below zero?
Vets check the dogs regularly. Dogs diagnosed with kennel cough are flown out by volunteer small plane pilots known as the Iditarod Air Force. They go to the dropped dog lot in Anchorage, where they rest on beds of straw, until the race is over. Then they go home.
Statistically, the most frequent injury to a husky running the Iditarod is slipped stifle. This is equivalent to a sprained ankle. Other minor injuries rank high on the list. The dogs, supreme athletes, process so much food through their digestive systems while running an endurance race that bleeding ulcers used to be an issue--until a vet got the bright idea to give each dog a little Prilosec.
Occasionally a dog will go into heat unexpectedly and have to be dropped; it happens. The surprise every musher dreads, however, is sudden death due to a heart condition that is impossible to diagnose while the dog is alive; human athletes suffer from an analogous condition. But over 40 years of completed races, among tens of thousands of dogs, as few as 142 deaths? That's fantastic!
The dogs love to run. They need to be fed, doctored, and bootied if the snow conditions are likely to be rough--otherwise they would (they do!) happily run along without a musher on the sled. It's the musher's job to keep them in good heart so they don't decide to quit because it isn't fun anymore. This has happened, and then the musher has to scratch. As I have heard mushers say, you can't push a rope.
If you ever do put your money where your pixels are and adopt an Alaskan husky, please remember that if you don't keep them in training they will drive you absolutely insane. Even dogs that are adopted out because they aren't racing material--yes, culls live, I've met them--are highly (highly) (EXTREMELY HIGHLY) energetic. You have to run them and run them or they will jump out of their skins. You may have to hire an energetic teenager just to keep the dog happily running every day. Athletes, remember?
did you know i work in alaska, i worked the yukon quest with the officials at my school, what i saw is the dogs love to run and have a strong bond to the mushers. abuse is not permitted cause there is so much to account for. vets, judges and officials. there is to much on the line to sway public opinion, too much money to lose. my take is the dogs are cared for from what i saw and live to haul and run.
I'm am 100% certain that the above comments about the cruelty the dog's suffer are more than exaggerated. When you consider that over 1000 dogs run in this race every year yet only a minuscule percentage of that number suffer any health issues, it is proof that they are well taken care of. There are vet checks time and time again during the race. These mushers love their dogs and these dogs love to run. Perhaps, Ms. Glickman, you should spend your time going throughout neighborhoods in cities and try to convince the hundreds of dog owners who keep their dogs tied up day in and day out, or those that NEVER feel it is their responsibility to walk their pet that they need to get out and let those dogs run! That is where the true neglect and abuse lies. I am happy to say that I was at the Iditarod starting line yesterday and enjoyed every minute of watching those dogs run! (Almost as much as they did!)
Clearly, Mrs. Glickman has been influenced by the radical hype of the Animal Rights extremists. Where is the logic in claiming that animals that are called upon to perform in the Iditarod are poorly cared for? They need to be at their peak physical condition. There are approximately 26 veterinary checkpoints along the trail where any injured dogs are taken off the team. Anyone who has ever owned a northern breed dog knows that they are amazingly powerful and love to run. As far as ripping out their toenails to get to a bitch in season, while they are eager breeders, I have never heard of this happening. I have owned and bred Siberians for 35 years and know that an accidental breeding can occur from time to time, but responsible breeders take steps to avoid it at all costs. With regard to the allegations that mushers barbarically destroy whole litters of puppies, that has the ring of AR rhetoric. Some may humanely euthanize the product of an accidental breeding if the sire and dam are too closely related and produced defective puppies. Remember that AR advocates believe dogs should sit on the couch all day eating treats and never engage in any recreational or service work of any kind - including Seeing Eye!
I do not own a sled dog but my old hunting companion, Bonnie, was a Golden Retriever...and she was truly a retriever. We spent many, many days sitting in a boat or blind in freezing rain waiting for ducks to fly in. When I shot one down, Bonnie would gleefully jump into that water to find and bring back the downed bird. I'm talking about cold, really cold water! Those days were the happiest of her life (mine, too) and she would do it time after time after time.
When Bonnie finally got too old, I left her at home for my last hunt and I cannot describe how miserable she looked watching me load up to go without her. There were other hunters there with their dogs, but it wasn't the same for me without Bonnie. I realized then that those trips were not about the ducks at all...it was all about the time she and I spent together sitting in those miserable, freezing conditions sharing an adventure and, perhaps, a sandwich.
Bonnie was born to retrieve and those sled dogs are born to run. Don't take those opportunities away from them. It's what they were put on this Earth to do.