Warmer Temperatures and Development Causes Iditarod to Move Start North
Thanks to the LA Times for this article.
Warming trend hits sled dog race
Alaska’s Iditarod will permanently move its official start north for better snow conditions.
From the Associated Press
January 9, 2008ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — Modern challenges are catching up with the world’s most famous sled dog race.
Citing rapid urban growth and a warming climate, officials with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race said Wednesday they were implementing permanent logistical changes that in recent years have become the norm for the March event.
The March 1 ceremonial start in Anchorage will run 11 miles, seven miles shorter than the traditional route. The actual competitive start of the 1,100-mile race the following day will move 30 miles north to Willow from the historical site in Wasilla, Iditarod headquarters and part of the fastest growing region of the state.“A lot of development in the area makes it less desirable, and there have been less-than-winter conditions,” said Stan Hooley, executive director of the Iditarod Trail Committee. “It just doesn’t make sense to us to make choices that are not in the best interest of both the two- and four-legged competitors.”
Long gone are the early days of the race begun in 1973 to commemorate the 1925 delivery by sled dogs of lifesaving diphtheria serum to Nome.
Because of lack of snow, the competitive launch — called the restart — has not taken place in Wasilla since 2002. The following year, conditions were so dismal along some stretches of the race trail north of Willow that race managers made the unprecedented decision to hold the restart in Fairbanks, more than 200 miles from Wasilla.
Since then, Willow has been the site where mushers and their dog teams begin the trek to Nome.
For the ceremonial start, snow is trucked along the route that begins in downtown Anchorage. That’s not a solution for the actual competition, officials said.
“The reality is the teams racing,” Hooley said. “That, in and of itself, means there’s a completely different level of acceptable conditions on the trails.”
Willow also has become the preferred site for its rural setting, officials said. Mushers take off from the frozen Willow River and soon vanish into the wilderness.
Wasilla, on the other hand, has seen tremendous development and growth over the years. Now houses and businesses line the Knik-Goose Bay Road parallel to the Wasilla race route leading to the checkpoint in the community of Knik, home of late Joe Redington Sr., father of the Iditarod. Under the route changes, Knik also will be bypassed.
“No matter how many resources we have available, conditions will never be as race-ready as Willow,” Hooley said. “No matter what the weather conditions would be, there’s a lot of asphalt and other things that don’t mix well with competitive racing. To be around that is stressful for the dogs.”
In the early days of the Iditarod, there were no ceremonial starts at all. The first two years, in fact, saw the competitive race taking off from Anchorage, recalled 1978 winner Dick Mackey, the father of defending champion Lance Mackey.
Mushers were slower in those days, their loads heavier and their equipment inferior to today’s sleek sleds, Mackey said in a phone interview from his winter home in Quartzsite, Ariz. Wasilla was a long way from development, too, he said.
“In general it’s much easier just to disappear and not have to contend with the crowds,” he said.
For that reason, Willow is a good choice for the restart even though Wasilla is “beautiful for fans,” Mackey said.
Follow this link to read the rest of the article.
The most important thing anyone should know about the Iditarod is that the race is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org.
Here’s a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race’s early years. In “WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod,” a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, “All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill.”
Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. “Sudden death” and “external myopathy,” a fatal condition in which a dog’s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson’s dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
“They’ve had the hell beaten out of them.” “You don’t just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.’ They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying.” -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno’s column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, “I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that “‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.’” “Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective…A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective.” “It is a common training device in use among dog mushers…A whip is a very humane training tool.”
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in “culling” or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. “On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don’t pull are dragged to death in harnesses…..” wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska’s Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, “He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death.”
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn’t anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals’ best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
Sincerely,
Margery Glickman
Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org
On Frozen Land We Run
What happens to us when we do
what our humans wish us to?
Our bones have been broken
our tendons and muscles torn
We’re starved to keep our weight low
and choked in the lines used to tow
If we don’t make the cut they kill us
we are culled, even when we’re pups
They do it with a shot to the head,
drag us, or club us until we’re dead
Many would deem this treatment illegal
because it violates animal cruelty laws
Yet we still end up with bleeding ulcers,
and fur loss, our footpads torn and raw
Many of us spend our life outside, alone
tethered to a short length of metal chain
so short that we must sleep in our own
urine and feces, and do so to our shame
We will get anemia or broken teeth,
get struck with vomiting or diarrhea
Some of us will bleed deep inside
gouged by the sleds the humans ride
Those same humans have skinned us
to make mittens to warm their hands
We fall prey to sprains and viral diseases
while they break our bodies in frozen lands
Some of us get penile frostbite
or ruptured discs in our spines
We get pneumonia, become paralyzed,
suffer from hypothermia–and we’ve died
Forced to run 1,150 miles over unforgiving land
many will perish, at the mercy of a human’s hand
53 percent of us will not cross the line in that final hour
Who’s there to speak for us and the lives that were ours?
This race is one of cruelty and of great loss,
one of misery, for many stout-hearted sled dogs!
This popular race that kills, is called the Iditarod…
~*~
Copyright 2007 Kathy Pippig Harris
Dedicated to all dogs who have suffered for the run of their lives…
And for those who ARE there to speak for the dogs - The Sled Dog Action Coalition
http://www.helpsleddogs.org
Thanks Kathy for another moving poem!
I personally fully support the Iditarod and I have volunteered for the past 11 years. Those of you who say it is a cruel race and the dogs are horribly beaten and injured…you should see what they would look like if they did not run. They are bred to do this and in the two weeks it takes to complete the race there are over 1500 dogs out on the trail. I would expect that 1 or 2 dogs out of that many would die a normal death in that time period. I am currently sitting at Iditarod headquarters in Nome, Alaska waiting for more musher to complete the race. I watched some of the teams coming to the finishline and most of the dogs were all up and ready to go after running for over a thousand miles. I completed the Junior Iditarod this year and I was extremely proud of my dogs and their accomplishment. Those of you that think this race is inhumane should come actually visit the race and see the bond these dogs have with their musher.
Meredith Mapes
2008 Junior Iditarod Finsiher