Racing for the Grave: The Iditarod's Trail of Dog Deaths
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - PETA
January 24, 2006
By Heather Moore
The 34th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a grueling 1,150-mile expedition from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, kicks off on March 4, 2006. The mushers, or dog-sled drivers, will be competing for a hefty cash prize; the dogs will simply try to survive. They?re viewed as little more than snowmobiles with fur, bred for a singular purpose, and casualties are acceptable.
Inhospitable and Inhumane
About 1,500 dogs start the race, but more than one-third are flown out every year because they become sick, injured, or exhausted from being forced to run for hours through jagged mountain ranges, frozen rivers, dense forests, and desolate tundra in biting winds, blinding snowstorms, and temperatures dropping to more than 100 degrees below zero.
The dogs, often Siberian huskies weighing only 40 to 45 pounds, are usually tethered to 15 other runners and 400 pound-sleds. They must run about 125 miles per day with barely any rest. The race usually lasts anywhere from 9 to 14 days. The current speed record, set by Martin Buser in 2002, is eight days, 22 hours, and 46 minutes.
The dogs? feet become bruised and bloodied, cut by ice, and just plain worn out from the incredible amount of ground they cover. Many pull muscles, incur stress fractures, or become sick with diarrhea, dehydration, intestinal viruses, bleeding stomach ulcers, hypothermia, or hyperthermia.
Orlando Sentinel sports columnist George Diaz has likened the Iditarod to ?racing your dog from Orlando to New York, depriving him of sleep to complete the course as quickly as possible, mushing though waist-deep water and ice, with the dog losing about 10 pounds through the ordeal.?
While ?overdriving? or ?overworking? an animal is considered a violation of cruelty-to-animals laws in 38 states, it does not apply in Alaska. The dogs have no choice but to run; they are tethered together and there are no rules against whipping them. When the dogs become too weak or sick, they are dragged along, sometimes flipping on their backs.
In 2002, Dr. Michael S. Davis and colleagues at Oklahoma State University examined the airways of 59 dogs 24 to 48 hours after they completed the race and found that 81 percent of the dogs had ?abnormal accumulations? of mucous or cellular debris in their lower airways. According to their report, which was published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the lung damage was classified as moderate to severe in nearly half of the dogs.
Driving Dogs to Death
Each year, at least one or two dogs die during the race, usually from hyperthermia, gastric ulcers, or ?Sled Dog Myopathy??literally being run to death. Says George Diaz, ?Although the fluff coverage in The Anchorage Daily News promotes the Iditarod as the ?last great race,? it is nothing more than a barbaric ritual that gives Alaskan cowboys a license to kill.?
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) reports that the Iditarod?s death rate is 2.9 fatalities for every 1,000 competitors. If the Boston Marathon suffered deaths at the same rate, 290 human runners would have died during the 1990s.
Although there is no official death toll available for the race?s early years, at least 126 dogs have perished since the race began in 1973. According to HSUS, the first race is reported to have resulted in the deaths of 15 to 19 dogs. In 1985, a musher was disqualified after he kicked his dog to death. That same year, a moose stomped through a team of dogs, killing two and injuring six.
Jerry Riley, the 1975 winner, was banned for life in 1990 after he hit and killed a dog with a snow hook, a large, sharp metal claw. In 1996, five-time Iditarod winner Rick Swenson was disqualified after one of his dogs died when Swenson mushed through a waist-deep overflow?a combination of water and slush pooled on the surface of a frozen river.
In 1998, a five-year-old dog in Linda Joy?s team collapsed and died after more than 1,000 miles on the trail, while two other dogs collapsed during the race and died after its conclusion. In 1999, musher Jeremy Gebauer?s five-year-old dog, Rodman, died after running 650 miles.
Other dogs have died from strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury from collision, heart failure, and pneumonia. Two dogs were even killed by a snow machine.
In 2004, Wolf, a 5-year old dog in musher Lance Mackey?s team, died when he regurgitated food and choked on it, a common occurrence during the race. Interestingly, when race officials reported Wolf?s death, they announced that the first dog had died during the race?they knew to expect other deaths. Predictably, a second dog, Takk, died due to blood loss associated with the presence of gastric ulcers. Ulcers are linked to anti-inflammatory drugs that are often used to mask injury.
Four dogs died during last year?s race?Rita, a three-year old in the team of musher Paul Gebhardt; Oakley, a four-year-old female from the team of Montana musher Jason Barron; Nellie, a two-year old from Montana musher and four-time Iditarod champion Doug Swinley?s team; and Tyson, a three-year-old male on Canadian musher Michael Salvisberg?s team.
Veterinarians suspected that Rita died of ?some sort of ulceration.? Nellie had an intestinal abnormality and had been suffering from acute pneumonia before she died; and Tyson encountered open water and drowned while being transported from the plane to the dog lot. According to a March 19, 2005 Iditarod advisory, the cause of Oakley?s death was ?unknown? at the time.
As Hartford Courant Sports columnist Jeff Jacoby says, ?The supporters of this race have the audacity to call the Iditarod a sporting event. The truth is it?s closer to the scourging scene in [The Passion].
Suffering ?Behind the Scenes?
Many more dogs die after the race is over. In a March 20, 2004 Santa Rosa Press Democrat article by Bod Padecky, Dr. Paula Kislak, President of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, stated that ?With a buildup of lactic acid and other chemicals from muscle degradation as a result of extreme exercise, toxicity in the liver and kidneys may not cause death for days or weeks after a race.?
Countless others die before the race even starts. Thousands are bred to run in the Iditarod, but not every puppy is born a fast runner. In order to see which ones are good at pulling, mushers put the puppies in harness when they are about six to seven months old. Others hook them right up to sleds, while still others have the dogs drag logs, tires, or other heavy objects around. (Teams preparing for the Iditarod are often forced to pull a truck). Those who do not make the grade are usually killed by bludgeoning, drowning, or shooting.
In September 1991, Frank Winkler, a two-time Iditarod racer, was charged with 14 counts of cruelty to animals after an animal control officer, summoned by Winkler?s neighbor, found a crate of dead and dying puppies in Winkler?s pickup truck. Winkler, who claimed he couldn?t afford to take the animals to a veterinarian to be euthanized, allegedly bludgeoned the puppies with the blunt end of an ax. According to court documents, Winkler said that he shot some of the dogs, a ?kinder? method, according to veterinarians, and was just following advice from fellow mushers. Musher Lorraine Temple justified shooting dogs in a 1999 interview by saying, ?They can?t keep a dog who?s a mile an hour too slow.?
Most dogs left after the cull live in cramped kennels that are usually not inspected by any regulatory agency. Kennel operators often keep dogs tethered on short ropes or chains or confined in tiny spaces. In 2003, Clayton ?Tom? Sheperd, a self-professed musher who was training dogs to run the Iditarod, was charged with cruelty to animals for keeping 14 huskies chained to barrels on the back of a home-made trailer. Clayton maintained that this mode of transportation was common for dogs in the Iditarod.
In October 2004, nearly 30 malnourished sled dogs were seized from David Straub, who has run the Iditarod three times, last in 2002. Straub was charged with 17 counts of cruelty to animals and the dogs were taken to a local animal care facility.
Iditarod champion Martin Buser told Heidi Loranger of KTVA.com, ?I?m glad I?m paying taxes that a Borough can step in, in a situation like that. That?s what we have animal shelters for. If somebody?s behind the eight ball they can bail somebody like David out. I?m glad they stepped in. I feel bad for him because he?s well-meaning; it?s just not working out for him.?
It obviously wasn?t working out for the dogs either; authorities said they were so dehydrated that their hides hung off their bony frames.
Profiting from Pain and Misery
The Iditarod is organized by the Iditarod Trail Committee (ITC) and said to commemorate the historic diphtheria serum run of 1925, which was roughly half the distance and consisted of a 20-team relay. However, the Iditarod actually commemorates the life of musher Leonhard Seppala, and was originally run in two heats over a 25-mile course in 1967 and officially named the Iditarod Trail Seppala Memorial Race.
But like any other tourist event, the real motive of the Iditarod is money. In March 2004, USA Today Sportswriter Jon Saraceno, who dubbed the race the ?Ihurtadog,? reported that ?The economic impact to Anchorage, site of the ceremonial star, is estimated at more than $5 million?The dogs, of course, get their usual take. More suffering.?
The race?s primary sponsors are Cabela?s, Wells Fargo, GCI, Anchorage Chrysler Dodge, ABC Alaska?s Superstation, Anchorage Daily News, ChevronTexaco, Global Information Technologies, FredMeyer, Millennium Alaskan Hotel, and PenAir.
Through the years, companies like Nestl?Rite Aid, Irridium World Communications, Safeway, Maxwell House Brand, True Value Hardware, BP Amoco, Sherwin-Williams, Upjohn, Tropicana, Pizza Hut, Costco, and Pfizer Pharmacia have canceled their sponsorship after hearing from consumers and organizations opposed to the race.
Perhaps one of the Iditarod?s most outspoken opponents is Miamian Margery Glickman, a retired elementary-school teacher who founded the non-profit Sled Dog Action Coalition after vacationing in Alaska in 1998. While sightseeing, Glickman happened upon a ?dog farm? where more than 200 animals were being raised to race in the Iditarod. ?I found the conditions horrific,? Glickman told The Miami Herald. ?The dogs live tethered permanently on these short leashes. I was appalled, and that feeling stayed with me. I?m taking a stand to help these dogs.?
People can help these dogs best simply by not going to see the Iditarod and encouraging others to do the same. As Jeff Jacoby says, what the Iditarod does to dogs is true ?March madness.?
Heather Moore is a senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; HelpingAnimals.com.
The 34th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a grueling 1,150-mile expedition from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, kicks off on March 4, 2006. The mushers, or dog-sled drivers, will be competing for a hefty cash prize; the dogs will simply try to survive. They?re viewed as little more than snowmobiles with fur, bred for a singular purpose, and casualties are acceptable.
Inhospitable and Inhumane
About 1,500 dogs start the race, but more than one-third are flown out every year because they become sick, injured, or exhausted from being forced to run for hours through jagged mountain ranges, frozen rivers, dense forests, and desolate tundra in biting winds, blinding snowstorms, and temperatures dropping to more than 100 degrees below zero.
The dogs, often Siberian huskies weighing only 40 to 45 pounds, are usually tethered to 15 other runners and 400 pound-sleds. They must run about 125 miles per day with barely any rest. The race usually lasts anywhere from 9 to 14 days. The current speed record, set by Martin Buser in 2002, is eight days, 22 hours, and 46 minutes.
The dogs? feet become bruised and bloodied, cut by ice, and just plain worn out from the incredible amount of ground they cover. Many pull muscles, incur stress fractures, or become sick with diarrhea, dehydration, intestinal viruses, bleeding stomach ulcers, hypothermia, or hyperthermia.
Orlando Sentinel sports columnist George Diaz has likened the Iditarod to ?racing your dog from Orlando to New York, depriving him of sleep to complete the course as quickly as possible, mushing though waist-deep water and ice, with the dog losing about 10 pounds through the ordeal.?
While ?overdriving? or ?overworking? an animal is considered a violation of cruelty-to-animals laws in 38 states, it does not apply in Alaska. The dogs have no choice but to run; they are tethered together and there are no rules against whipping them. When the dogs become too weak or sick, they are dragged along, sometimes flipping on their backs.
In 2002, Dr. Michael S. Davis and colleagues at Oklahoma State University examined the airways of 59 dogs 24 to 48 hours after they completed the race and found that 81 percent of the dogs had ?abnormal accumulations? of mucous or cellular debris in their lower airways. According to their report, which was published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the lung damage was classified as moderate to severe in nearly half of the dogs.
Driving Dogs to Death
Each year, at least one or two dogs die during the race, usually from hyperthermia, gastric ulcers, or ?Sled Dog Myopathy??literally being run to death. Says George Diaz, ?Although the fluff coverage in The Anchorage Daily News promotes the Iditarod as the ?last great race,? it is nothing more than a barbaric ritual that gives Alaskan cowboys a license to kill.?
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) reports that the Iditarod?s death rate is 2.9 fatalities for every 1,000 competitors. If the Boston Marathon suffered deaths at the same rate, 290 human runners would have died during the 1990s.
Although there is no official death toll available for the race?s early years, at least 126 dogs have perished since the race began in 1973. According to HSUS, the first race is reported to have resulted in the deaths of 15 to 19 dogs. In 1985, a musher was disqualified after he kicked his dog to death. That same year, a moose stomped through a team of dogs, killing two and injuring six.
Jerry Riley, the 1975 winner, was banned for life in 1990 after he hit and killed a dog with a snow hook, a large, sharp metal claw. In 1996, five-time Iditarod winner Rick Swenson was disqualified after one of his dogs died when Swenson mushed through a waist-deep overflow?a combination of water and slush pooled on the surface of a frozen river.
In 1998, a five-year-old dog in Linda Joy?s team collapsed and died after more than 1,000 miles on the trail, while two other dogs collapsed during the race and died after its conclusion. In 1999, musher Jeremy Gebauer?s five-year-old dog, Rodman, died after running 650 miles.
Other dogs have died from strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury from collision, heart failure, and pneumonia. Two dogs were even killed by a snow machine.
In 2004, Wolf, a 5-year old dog in musher Lance Mackey?s team, died when he regurgitated food and choked on it, a common occurrence during the race. Interestingly, when race officials reported Wolf?s death, they announced that the first dog had died during the race?they knew to expect other deaths. Predictably, a second dog, Takk, died due to blood loss associated with the presence of gastric ulcers. Ulcers are linked to anti-inflammatory drugs that are often used to mask injury.
Four dogs died during last year?s race?Rita, a three-year old in the team of musher Paul Gebhardt; Oakley, a four-year-old female from the team of Montana musher Jason Barron; Nellie, a two-year old from Montana musher and four-time Iditarod champion Doug Swinley?s team; and Tyson, a three-year-old male on Canadian musher Michael Salvisberg?s team.
Veterinarians suspected that Rita died of ?some sort of ulceration.? Nellie had an intestinal abnormality and had been suffering from acute pneumonia before she died; and Tyson encountered open water and drowned while being transported from the plane to the dog lot. According to a March 19, 2005 Iditarod advisory, the cause of Oakley?s death was ?unknown? at the time.
As Hartford Courant Sports columnist Jeff Jacoby says, ?The supporters of this race have the audacity to call the Iditarod a sporting event. The truth is it?s closer to the scourging scene in [The Passion].
Suffering ?Behind the Scenes?
Many more dogs die after the race is over. In a March 20, 2004 Santa Rosa Press Democrat article by Bod Padecky, Dr. Paula Kislak, President of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, stated that ?With a buildup of lactic acid and other chemicals from muscle degradation as a result of extreme exercise, toxicity in the liver and kidneys may not cause death for days or weeks after a race.?
Countless others die before the race even starts. Thousands are bred to run in the Iditarod, but not every puppy is born a fast runner. In order to see which ones are good at pulling, mushers put the puppies in harness when they are about six to seven months old. Others hook them right up to sleds, while still others have the dogs drag logs, tires, or other heavy objects around. (Teams preparing for the Iditarod are often forced to pull a truck). Those who do not make the grade are usually killed by bludgeoning, drowning, or shooting.
In September 1991, Frank Winkler, a two-time Iditarod racer, was charged with 14 counts of cruelty to animals after an animal control officer, summoned by Winkler?s neighbor, found a crate of dead and dying puppies in Winkler?s pickup truck. Winkler, who claimed he couldn?t afford to take the animals to a veterinarian to be euthanized, allegedly bludgeoned the puppies with the blunt end of an ax. According to court documents, Winkler said that he shot some of the dogs, a ?kinder? method, according to veterinarians, and was just following advice from fellow mushers. Musher Lorraine Temple justified shooting dogs in a 1999 interview by saying, ?They can?t keep a dog who?s a mile an hour too slow.?
Most dogs left after the cull live in cramped kennels that are usually not inspected by any regulatory agency. Kennel operators often keep dogs tethered on short ropes or chains or confined in tiny spaces. In 2003, Clayton ?Tom? Sheperd, a self-professed musher who was training dogs to run the Iditarod, was charged with cruelty to animals for keeping 14 huskies chained to barrels on the back of a home-made trailer. Clayton maintained that this mode of transportation was common for dogs in the Iditarod.
In October 2004, nearly 30 malnourished sled dogs were seized from David Straub, who has run the Iditarod three times, last in 2002. Straub was charged with 17 counts of cruelty to animals and the dogs were taken to a local animal care facility.
Iditarod champion Martin Buser told Heidi Loranger of KTVA.com, ?I?m glad I?m paying taxes that a Borough can step in, in a situation like that. That?s what we have animal shelters for. If somebody?s behind the eight ball they can bail somebody like David out. I?m glad they stepped in. I feel bad for him because he?s well-meaning; it?s just not working out for him.?
It obviously wasn?t working out for the dogs either; authorities said they were so dehydrated that their hides hung off their bony frames.
Profiting from Pain and Misery
The Iditarod is organized by the Iditarod Trail Committee (ITC) and said to commemorate the historic diphtheria serum run of 1925, which was roughly half the distance and consisted of a 20-team relay. However, the Iditarod actually commemorates the life of musher Leonhard Seppala, and was originally run in two heats over a 25-mile course in 1967 and officially named the Iditarod Trail Seppala Memorial Race.
But like any other tourist event, the real motive of the Iditarod is money. In March 2004, USA Today Sportswriter Jon Saraceno, who dubbed the race the ?Ihurtadog,? reported that ?The economic impact to Anchorage, site of the ceremonial star, is estimated at more than $5 million?The dogs, of course, get their usual take. More suffering.?
The race?s primary sponsors are Cabela?s, Wells Fargo, GCI, Anchorage Chrysler Dodge, ABC Alaska?s Superstation, Anchorage Daily News, ChevronTexaco, Global Information Technologies, FredMeyer, Millennium Alaskan Hotel, and PenAir.
Through the years, companies like Nestl?Rite Aid, Irridium World Communications, Safeway, Maxwell House Brand, True Value Hardware, BP Amoco, Sherwin-Williams, Upjohn, Tropicana, Pizza Hut, Costco, and Pfizer Pharmacia have canceled their sponsorship after hearing from consumers and organizations opposed to the race.
Perhaps one of the Iditarod?s most outspoken opponents is Miamian Margery Glickman, a retired elementary-school teacher who founded the non-profit Sled Dog Action Coalition after vacationing in Alaska in 1998. While sightseeing, Glickman happened upon a ?dog farm? where more than 200 animals were being raised to race in the Iditarod. ?I found the conditions horrific,? Glickman told The Miami Herald. ?The dogs live tethered permanently on these short leashes. I was appalled, and that feeling stayed with me. I?m taking a stand to help these dogs.?
People can help these dogs best simply by not going to see the Iditarod and encouraging others to do the same. As Jeff Jacoby says, what the Iditarod does to dogs is true ?March madness.?
Heather Moore is a senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; HelpingAnimals.com.