Dog-sled race has a little less bark
The Iditarod, a 1,100-mile dog-sled race across Alaska, is hurting in this recession. Prize money is down and costs are up. Mitchell Hartman reports.
The Iditarod dog-sled race (iditarod.com)
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Steve Chiotakis: Seems there's no escaping the fallout. Even the Iditarod -- that 1,100-mile dog-sled race across the Alaskan tundra -- is hurting. Competitors and prize money are melting away. And the race kicks off tomorrow. Here's Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman.
Mitchell Hartman: There will be 67 teams mushing through whiteouts and deep freezes this year from Anchorage to Nome. That's a third fewer than in 2008. And the top prize is down to just over $600,000 dollars. Last year it was nearly a million. The Iditarod's organizers say costs are up for everything from vets to bush-plane flights.
University of Alaska professor Brian O'Donoghue ran the race in 1991 and wrote a book about it called: "My Lead Dog was a Lesbian." He's seen competitors' costs rising as well.
BRIAN O'DONOGHUE: We are on the end of the line in terms of supply chain. Dog food, gasoline, all of it has really risen in price and made operating a kennel more expensive.
The pros keep as many as 50 dogs in training year-round. O'Donoghue had half that many.
O'DONOGHUE: It was like getting a pay increase when we did finally sell our dog team.
O'Donoghue was never exactly at the front of the pack, by the way. The year he ran the Iditarod, he finished dead last.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
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From FL, 03/06/2009
Animal lovers are happy that the Iditarod is hurting. For the dogs, this event is a bottomless pit of suffering. What happens to the dogs during the Iditarod includes death, paralysis, frostbite (where it hurts the most!), bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons and sprains. At least 136 dogs have died in the race. No one knows how many dogs die after this tortuous ordeal or during training. For more facts about the Iditarod, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org .
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 finish, 81 percent have
lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine
said that 61 percent of the dogs who complete the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Iditarod dog kennels are puppy mills. Mushers breed large numbers of dogs and
routinely kill unwanted ones, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, including
those who have outlived their usefulness, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged, drowned or clubbed to death. "Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don't pull are dragged to death in harnesses....." wrote former Iditarod dog handler Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska's Bush Blade Newspaper.
Dog beatings and whippings are common. During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses
reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, "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..."
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."
During the race, veterinarians do not give the dogs physical exams at every
checkpoint. Mushers speed through many checkpoints, so the dogs get the
briefest visual checks, if that. Instead of pulling sick dogs from the race, veterinarians frequently give them massive doses of antibiotics to keep them running.
Most Iditarod dogs are forced to live at the end of a chain when they aren't
hauling people around. It has been reported that dogs who don't make the main team are never taken off-chain. Chained dogs have been attacked by wolves, bears and other animals. Old and arthritic dogs suffer terrible pain in the blistering cold.
Margery Glickman
Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org
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