THE Sled Dog Action Coalition has claimed that a CBS Early Show interview of blind musher Rachael Scdoris ignored the plight of the Iditarod dogs and failed to give equal time to the animal protection side of the Iditarod story.
CBS asked Scdoris for her opinion of the animal protection viewpoint. Nothing was said about the many ways in which the Iditarod is cruel. The coalition claims that this was not a fair or objective presentation of its views or of the facts.
Animal protection advocates had requested that the interview of blind musher Rachael Scdoris be balanced by giving equal time to the animal protection side of the Iditarod story. But instead, CBS simply asked Scdoris for her opinion, without detailing what the coalition's viewpoint was about. CBS did not give a fair or objective presentation of the animal protection perspective or of the facts, they claim.
In the Iditarod, the coalition claims, dogs are forced to run 1150 miles over a gruelling terrain in 8 to 15 days, which is the approximate distance between New York City and Miami. Dog deaths and injuries are common in the race. USA Today sports columnist Jon Saraceno called the Iditarod "a travesty of gruelling proportions".
Orlando Sentinel sports columnist George Diaz said the race is "a barbaric ritual" and "an illegal sweatshop for dogs". USA Today business columnist Bruce Horovitz said the race is a "public-relations minefield." On average, 54 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line.
At least 120 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, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. "Kicks that were 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.
In USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno's column, Tom Classen, a retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, claimed 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."
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."
"Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don't pull are dragged to death in the harnesses," wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska's Bush Blade Newspaper, March 2000.
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.
On the other side of the coin many enthusiasts of the Iditarod claim that mushers would not treat their dogs badly as often during the race their very lives depend on the dogs. They say that every time a dog dies during the race that musher is one dog down, which gives an advantage to the rest of the teams.
But there is certainly no doubt that the race is 'full on' and dogs do die on the way. And when mushers who have been accused of cruelty and banned, then reinstated, are later elected to the organising committee of the Iditarod, one does begin to feel rather uneasy about the whole thing and about the way it is run.
Perhaps the time has come to reorganise and make new rules. The death of a dog from dragging, starvation, overwork or driver intent should mean automatic disqualification - mushers who would treat their dogs in such a fashion are not good drivers or owners and do not deserve to be treated as if they are. The measure of a good musher surely is that all dogs in the team arrive at the finishing line in good health. Accidental injury of a dog should mean loss of points, as should poor health in a dog at the finish line.
Winning should not be simply who arrives at the finish line first - it should be a combination of speed, driving skill (points should be lost for putting the dogs in danger when a more skilled driver would have chosen an easier route) and also the ability to balance the dogs' food intake with the demands on their physical energy. A good driver has worked with the dogs and knows the requirements of each dog individually.
One thing is for sure - in the 21st Century there is no place for cruelty towards any animal and those guilty of even half the claims of the campaigners are, sadly, living in a mentally depleted version of the world. It is time for a change.
