Wrecked Iditarod Update

8 Responses to Wrecked Iditarod Update

1. miked1947 says:

   March 17, 2013 at 1:43 pm

   http://abclocal.go.com/wls/gallery?section=news/national_world&id=9025846&photo=1

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2. miked1947 says:

   March 17, 2013 at 1:45 pm

   http://www.adn.com/2013/03/13/2823745/2013-iditarod-day-11.html

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3. miked1947 says:

   March 17, 2013 at 1:46 pm

   http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/03/iditarod_trail_sled_dog_race_2_1.html

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4. Wyguy says:

   March 17, 2013 at 2:39 pm

   Unrelated, but related, global warming has disrupted the Milano-San Remo pro bycicle race.
   http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/03/news/snow-clips-96km-from-2013-milano-sanremo_278027

   Very interesting.

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5. Gina says:

   March 17, 2013 at 3:10 pm

   No, it didn’t – what they actually said was that the heat wrecked other sled races.

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   • stevengoddard says:

     March 17, 2013 at 3:16 pm

     ROFLMAO

     Trail Report—-What about that article in the New York Times?
     Posted by Joe Runyan
     Date: February 14, 2013 8:06 am

     The New York Times featured an article February 5, 2013 with the attention getting title “Warm Weather Forces Changes Ahead of Iditarod Race (Mary Pilon).”

     Race Marshal Mark Nordman returned my phone call. “Trail’s great, lots of snow, all the way to Nome. In fact, we might have more than average on the south side of the Alaska Range (check out the Iditarod trail map and note Skwetna, Finger Lake, and Rainy Pass checkpoints). The only place that could be short is by Rohn checkpoint, and that’s always a place with little snow.”

     http://iditarod.com/musher/update-1/

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     • Ben says:

       March 19, 2013 at 2:51 am

       There was so little snow this year, that a dog got buried in snow and died.

       https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/iditarod-dog-dies-buried-snow-article-1.1291065

       Below is the original NY Times article about how little snow there is…
       https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/sports/warm-weather-forces-changes-ahead-of-iditarod-race.html

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6. Margery Glickman says:

   March 31, 2013 at 3:49 pm

   The NY Times said that warming could bring about the end of the iditarod. It would be great if the race ceased to exist. 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.

   Iditarod dogs endure brutal training. Jeanne Olson, who has been a veterinarian in Alaska since 1988, confirmed the brutality used by mushers training dogs for the Iditarod. She talked about dogs having cracked ribs, broken jaws or skulls from mushers using two-by-fours for punishment. In an article published by the University of Alaska, Dr. Olson said, “There are mushers out there whose philosophy is…that if that dog acts up I will hit that dog to the point where it would rather die than do what it did, ’cause the next time it is gonna die.'”
   Jane Stevens, a former Iditarod dog handler, describes a dog beating in her letter published by the Whitehorse Star (Feb. 23, 2011). She wrote: “I witnessed the extremely violent beating of an Iditarod racing dog by one of the racing industry’s most high-profile top 10 mushers. Be assured the beating was clearly not within an ‘acceptable range’ of ‘discipline’. Indeed, the scene left me appalled, sick and shocked. After viewing an individual sled dog repeatedly booted with full force, the male person doing the beating jumping back and forth like a pendulum with his full body weight to gain full momentum and impact. He then alternated his beating technique with full-ranging, hard and fast, closed-fist punches like a piston to the dog as it was held by its harness splayed onto the ground. He then staggeringly lifted the dog by the harness with two arms above waist height, then slammed the dog into the ground with full force, again repeatedly, all of this repeatedly.”

   During the 2007 race, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Jon Saraceno wrote in his 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.”

   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.” He also said, “It is a common training device in use among dog mushers…” Former Iditarod dog handler Mike Cranford wrote in Alaska’s Bush Blade Newspaper: “Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don’t pull are dragged to death in harnesses…..”

   FOR MORE FACTS: Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org

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