Iditarod Dog Death Raises Howls of Protest

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is an astounding and often confounding event—a race of dog teams and mushers from Anchorage to Nome across the heart of Alaska. It is run through wind, rain, ice, and snow sometimes blowing in a white out that blanks the sky. It has made heroes of the dogs and men and women who have run and won it, including the late Susan Butcher, a four-time champion with her great lead dog, Granite. A dog no one wanted until he blossomed around age four, Granite was the quintessential late bloomer.

Butcher was a leader among mushers in improving treatment of dogs during the race, not only for their sake but also in an attempt to respond to legitimate criticisms while blunting hyperbolic charges from animal rights groups. She and other like-minded mushers helped nudge the generally obdurate Iditarod Trail Committee to make changes in the rules governing dog care. These, along with an increasing awareness among mushers that abusing dogs did not generally make them run fast—the success in the 1980s and 1990s of Butcher, Martin Buser, Doug Swingley, and Jeff King sealed that argument—transformed the race in terms of the way dogs are trained, managed, and treated. These race winners were fierce rivals with very different styles but a shared devotion to their dogs.

Butcher retired soon after her fourth victory to start a family. Her attempt to work with critics, particularly the Humane Society of the United States, had ended when the organization betrayed her confidence by publicly condemning the race as inherently cruel to dogs. She died in 2006, age 51, after a battle with leukemia. Since 2008, the first Saturday in March, the day of the ceremonial start of the Iditarod, has been Susan Butcher Day in Alaska.

Dogs have died during the race—approximately 140 according to PETA’s tally, a small percentage of those who have competed since the first Iditarod in 1973. The causes have ranged from moose attack to accidents to a variety of medical ailments.

Charging that the “Iditarod kills dogs,” the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and other groups mounted a vigorous campaign against the Iditarod during the 1990s that damaged its reputation among the public and the media. The race lost sponsors because of the controversy. The assault also fueled an insular, siege mentality in race organizers that has done little to help their public image.

I investigated the charges for the Atlantic Monthly in 1995—“The Perilous Iditarod”—and concluded that the fundamental charge that the dogs were made to run, even to death, was untrue. Anyone who knows about dogs knows that when they have had enough they stop. They go on strike, and no amount of whacking is going to make them go. The quitting point is different for different dogs.

When from 2009 through 2012, no dogs died in the Iditarod, none of the opposition groups that I know of stepped forward to say, “The Iditarod does not kill dogs.”

Then, this year, with racers still crossing under the burled arch that marks the finish line in Nome—days after Aliy Zirkle had lost her bid to be the first woman since Butcher to win the Iditarod by just 24 minutes to Mitch Seavey—a dog died under circumstances that strongly suggested human error if not outright negligence on the part of race organizers.

Mushers routinely drop dogs from their teams at checkpoints for reasons ranging from injury to illness to disinterest. The best among them recognize that it is far better to drop an under performing dog than have it slow down the team. Race organizers corral dropped dogs in McGrath, the largest interior village, and Unalakleet, the first village on the Norton Sound, for transport by jet to Anchorage where they are kept until the mushers reclaim them.

Unalakleet is a busy checkpoint because it is where the race hits the coast after a long portage from the Yukon River and because it has a landing strip to accommodate larger planes and lodging for the media and other race followers. On Monday, March 11, Paige Drobny, running in the middle of the pack, reached Unalakleet and before heading north toward Nome dropped a four-year-old male, Dorado. The dog was still there four days later because strong ground winds were preventing flights from taking off and landing. Race officials placed 100 of the 135 dogs waiting for flights to Anchorage in an abandoned hangar to shield fhem from the bitter wind. Another thirty-five were tethered outside as much out of the icy wind as possible.

At 3 a.m. on the morning of March 15, a race veterinarian checked the dogs. At 8:30 a.m.—five hours later, someone checked the dogs again and found eight of them buried under drifting snow. The dog named Dorado was dead from asphyxiation. He had suffocated under the snow.

When the news broke, PETA immediately snapped into attack mode. To date it has demanded that the state’s prosecutor in Nome press criminal negligence charges against everyone involved, including, absurdly, the musher. PETA also wrote to race sponsors on Thursday, March 21, urging them to drop their sponsorship.

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The race results were buried beneath a blizzard of recrimination. Race organizers went into defense mode, telling an AP reporter that they did not respond to PETA. Then on the Iditarod Facebook page they posted a lengthy but not particularly revelatory press release defending their record with dropped dogs and outlining a series of reforms designed to prevent future tragedies. Those include constructing boxes for holding dogs, regular monitoring, and more frequent flights shuttling dropped dogs to Anchorage.

Race officials also promised to meet with Drobny and her husband, Cody Strathe, to explain more of the circumstances surrounding Dorado’s death and the steps they are taking to prevent such an event happening again.

Race organizers also say that these actions prove they are determined to provide the best dog care possible. Their statements to date might be as close as the public and mushers get to an explanation, but they hardly present an adequate account of what happened.. Those five-and-a-half hours during which no one checked on the dogs remain unexplained. Were there no procedures in place to monitor dropped dogs at regular intervals, as the press release suggests? If not, why not? Who established the protocols for dealing with dropped dogs? Were the protocols faulty or simply not followed?

The mushers especially deserve a full accounting. Had a dog died on the trail under similar circumstances, its musher would have been bounced from the race. But more to the point here, as Strathe and Drobny have said, mushers drop dogs believing they will receive the best care available, which, at a minimum, should include close and frequent observation.

It is important to remember that the Iditarod—the race—did not kill Dorado, no matter how PETA likes to spin the facts. Drobny had dropped Dorado as a precautionary measure, believing he would receive the care he needed. He was out of the race.

Volunteer veterinarians gather at every checkpoint, checking each dog thoroughly, offering advice and treatment. They work grueling hours under tough conditions for love of the dogs and the event. Other people volunteer to fly officials, vets, supplies and dogs along the trail, and in the villages there are additional local volunteers. At the top of that volunteer army are race officials, including the paid head veterinarian, and they are the ones who finally must take full responsibility for Dorado’s death not only by implementing protocols for handling dropped dogs but also by explaining events fully to everyone concerned with the race, including the public. Responsible officials should resign to underscore that in this competition, the dogs come first.

Started as a race across Alaska to commemorate the heroic relay of mushers and dogs to deliver diphtheria vaccine to an epidemic gripped Nome in 1925, the Iditarod is fundamentally a celebration of the bond between humans and dogs. Every year for every musher there are two events—the public race to the finish; and the private challenge to reach Nome with their dog team happy and healthy and ready to run some more.

PETA’s protests cannot alter that reality. The race’s custodians must make sure they do not change it through omission or commission.