Iditarod Musher Dramatically Revives Fallen Dog

[jsmirman]

27. Have I ever seen it live? No. Have I followed it since Susan Butcher started dominating?

Yes. I'm a sports junkie. I used to be a kind of sportswriter (I didn't cover things for a daily, but, instead, for a glossy, where most of what I wrote about was sports).

I stopped following it when I became disgusted by dog deaths, what did not seem to be sufficient monitoring, and most particularly, the occasionally horrific events surrounding the breeding, raising, and training of dogs to be pack members.

There are a lot of the same problems here that we see in Horse Racing. I had a lifetime of following that "sport" until the day Eight Belles had to be destroyed and I realized I couldn't participate anymore.

I understand that there have been adaptations to the way they test for drugs and the way they attempt to mandate veterinary care, but just like in horse racing, there are many of us who are not left with the feeling that the protections in place to ensure the health of the dogs - from birth and raising, to the starting line, and then through the race - are sufficient.

Call us outsiders, point to the fact that there have been a lot of customs a very different man used to be able to get swept up in, like, say, barbecue in Alabama, but looking at it without an inherent conviction that "this is a good thing" may give us a different perspective.

http://www.adn.com/2009/03/20/731154/number-of-dog-deaths-on-iditarod.html

http://www.helpsleddogs.org/faq.htm

http://www.cesarsway.com/news/dognews/Tragic-Murder-of-Dogs-in-Canada

The lack of regulation of the breeding/raising/training process has ultimately left me cold. The Canada incident, of course, happened in Canada, but it sparked a debate about sled dog treatment that moved to the pages of publications like SI.

For my part, I don't understand why the race has to be as long as it is, I think that like any event (see: horse racing), where money is involved, it is very hard to keep up with all aspects of what precisely has happened to/been done to a voiceless participant out of whom peak performance is sought, and I don't believe the breeding/raising/training process has sufficient regulation to prevent cruelty - and I don't know that sufficient regulation is realistically possible. I know that in watching it (from afar) since the early/mid 1980's, it has become a bigger business proposition, and I believe that when "athletics" involve both voiceless participants and hefty financial stakes, bad things follow.

The "theory" of the event is intriguing. My desire to follow it as I learned more about it than just knowing who triumphantly "mushed" across the finish line, who got lost along the way, what underdog was surprisingly still in the hunt (although inevitably left behind by the better financed/more famous by the last leg) and began to understand the gaps in monitoring over what happened to these dogs before they reached the starting line - it has all killed my interest in the event.

The issues present in cycling provide a comparison point - the historic race events we can all get caught up in are fascinating, evocative, and intriguing, sports-wise, in their diversity of challenges - but they have become completely soiled and at least there the participants are entirely willing participants.

I'm just not buying - anymore - that the Iditarod is a necessary, humane, cruelty-free proposition.