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Sport and Competition
Why Did the Dog Go Over the Mountain?
An inquiry into what motivates dogs to run.
Posted April 21, 2019
It is an article of faith that emergent dogs made themselves invaluable to Paleolithic hunters and gatherers as hunters, guards, beasts of burden, and companions, a subset of which must be fellow travelers and which is different than serving as transport. I don’t have statistics to prove it but most dogs in my experience seem always ready to go walkabout—have an adventure even if they don’t like their ultimate destination. For that reason, I have posited that dogs emerged on the trail while traveling with their human or hominid friends—and it turns out that I might not have been far off. A few recent events have raised again this question of why dogs run—or walk—with a human or company of humans they have decided to join but perhaps just as often by themselves. What inspires those long-distance solo travelers? Is it, as the old song about a bear and a mountain suggests, to see what they can see? Or is it, as hard-headed pragmatists might argue, to find a mate? I consulted my friend Marc Bekoff, the world-renowned ethologist, author of over 30 books, keeper of the Psychology Today blog, Animal Emotions, and co-author with Jessica Pierce of two books, most recently, Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible (which emphasizes the importance of letting dogs move free of restraint as much as possible, so they can savor the world at their leisure through their senses, especially that of smell). Marc, who has devoted his life to studying canids admitted he had no ready explanation. He said that some dogs in good health seemed to run and run and run for no apparent reason while others would simply quit for no discernable reason.
I’ve often pondered this question without result and then laid it in a pile with other inchoate musings until some event caused me to excavate it—in this case the refusal by a team of Alaskan huskies in March 2019 to continue a race they were leading by five hours, with 80 percent complete. According to the mythology surrounding them, these dogs were created to run pulling a sled for more than 1,000 miles across Alaska. They love to run, we are told. Why, then, did they quit? Did they tire of being treated like machines (as if they had any notion of what that meant)? Could there be a substantial difference in their minds between running as a grinding job and running because that’s what they love to do? If so, what does this event tell us about how and why dogwolves and humans got together? (In my lexicon dogwolves are doglike wolves; wolfdogs are wolflike dogs.)
Since its inaugural running in 1973, the Iditarod Trail sled dog race has billed itself as “the world’s last great race,” a celebration of dogs always eager to run fast while dragging a packed sled and its human driver across the sparsely populated interior of Alaska. It is, say organizers and participants alike, “All about the dogs.” For some, having an adventure with dogs across the vast emptiness that is Alaska, the dogs are clearly the focus. But for others, winning comes first. Placing out of the money is tantamount to failure—even with deep-pocket sponsors: Maintaining a dog yard is an expensive proposition.
The Iditarod commemorates a 678-mile sled-dog relay bridging five days in January and February 1925 from Nenana, near Fairbanks, to Nome, at the time a mining town of 10,000 on the southern coast of the Seward Peninsula. The relay was staged for a compelling reason: to deliver several thousand glass vials of serum needed to prevent a deadly diphtheria epidemic. Much of the nation followed this event by telegraphed reports on the progress of a group of 20 native and Anglo-European mushers, organized by Leonhard Seppala. But it was Gunnar Kassen who succeeded in bringing the serum into Nome on February 2 behind Seppala’s second-string dog team. The lead dog on that team, Balto, became world famous. Indeed, a statue was erected to him in New York’s Central Park. Although Seppala’s lead dog Togo lost the canine fame derby to Balto, Seppala was widely celebrated for his heroic mushing in the serum run. Writing in the February 8, 1925, New York Times, Arthur Shield tweaked the “apostles of racial purity” [then, as now resurgent] by observing that Seppala’s Siberian Huskies were better bred than he, who was a mix of all Nordic types—“the Finn, the Swede, and the Norwegian.”
As it happened, on the way back to their remote cabin, Seppala’s great lead dog, Togo, decided to take a detour. With two teammates he had freed from the gangline, he went caribou hunting and according to legend, the three ate their fill before returning home.
Since 1980, Alaska Airlines has sponsored the Leonhard Seppala Award for Humanitarian Treatment of Dogs, awarded by vote of race vets to the musher who takes the best care of their dogs. Seppala was the North American sled dog champion, known for never taking a whip or club—two popular and brutal dog training methods to his dogs. All mushers would do well to emulate him. Champion sled dogs now, whether for short, intermediate, or long distance, are purpose-bred mutts. Mushing dogs today constitute a mix of different breeds that varies from kennel to kennel but often has at the base some Siberian husky or native huskies of the indigenous Alaskans, who were the better dogs. Once Anglo-European mushers began to race with native huskies, they started adding breeds: German shorthaired pointers, Irish setters and Targhee hounds, a type of staghound, popular in the Mountain States in the opening decades of the 20th century have gone into dogs of different mushers, as have the occasional wolf and coyote. The results are Alaskan huskies bred for speed, stamina, and strength, as well as prick ears and a double coat to provide protection from the bitter cold that can drop the temperature down to well below freezing. Over the past 25 years, as speeds and, more recently, temperatures have increased, the dogs have become distinctly more houndlike in appearance, with shorter coats, occasional flop ears, and longer legs. These “houndy” huskies are fast, but some of them might not be up to the challenges of recent years, especially choppy trails, open water, and rain where there should be snow.
The Iditarod claims to be all about dogs, but over the years, it has often balked at making changes to improve the lot of its canine competitors, in part because race organizers do not want to appear to bow to critics, many of whom live outside the state. But, however reluctantly, they have mandated changes in the way dogs live, work, and are transported—and it deploys a group of race veterinarians who monitor the health of every dog at every checkpoint. In the case of a dog's death, race officials investigate promptly and remove the musher from the race if they are found responsible.
Despite those efforts, dogs die in the Iditarod as they have from its inception. They have been trampled by moose, rammed by snow machine, drowned. The most recent death, in this year's race, was attributed to pneumonia. The deaths have led to charges by various animal rights groups that the Iditarod kills dogs and must, therefore, be stopped. I discussed this issue in a previous posting to this blog, in which I argue that the race should be reformed or consigned to the dust bin of history. The race is becoming a flat out charge across the state and that is forcing anyone with a thought of high placement to take unnecessary risks to push themselves and their dogs beyond exhaustion—and that doesn’t begin to address the issue of drug use, the culling of unwanted puppies, and the physical and mental abuse in dog yards. Many people argue that dog yards are inherently abusive.
I well remember my surprise when I checked the 2019 race standings the morning of March 8 and saw that Nicolas Petit, a French musher living in Alaska, was leading by more than five hours with 200 miles left to go—a huge margin. He’s going too fast, I thought, something’s got to give. Petit would not extend his lead. He would not even stay in the race as ten dogs, bred, born, raised, and trained to run fast and pull hard decided they had had enough. It is not uncommon for a team to strike—some very fine mushers have taken unscheduled breaks and even had to leave the race. But seldom is the rebellion so public, so embarrassing so humiliating. Petit said a young dog on his team was trying to make a pit stop when an older dog jumped on him. Petit said he yelled at the dogs to break them up, “Which is not done,” he admitted. He added that the entire team became so freaked out that they refused to proceed.
That must have been a hell of a yell—more like an enraged bellow from someone whose anger you don’t want to rouse. It is hard to see how a person not prone to screaming at their dogs would suddenly start, especially with such a commanding lead. More likely you would want to keep things calm and quiet, maintain your routine. Huskies relieve themselves while running in the gangline and will show a bit of impatience. It appears that whatever happened wasn’t so egregious that it required a verbal correction with enough anger to drive the team to quit. Veteran Alaska sports writer Craig Medred reported at the time that Petit’s team had also quit on him in 2014 because he pushed them too hard.
It appears to me that in 2019, musher and dogs were exhausted, stretched to their limit. Petit’s fit of temper must have sent them over the line, and their strike must have sent him to a horrible, dark spot as he tried to get them moving. He was parked by the trail, he said, hoping something would reignite their passion. But the bond between human and dogs was frayed nearly to breaking if it weren’t already broken. Finally, a snowmobile came and dragged them on a sled back to the last checkpoint they had passed. Petit soon withdrew from the race for the “mental well-being” of his team, the Iditarod trail committee said. That sounds like a team in meltdown. Before Petit attempts the Iditarod again, perhaps he might learn to manage his race better, so he doesn’t once more burn his team out short of the finish line Nome.
About the time Petit was driving his team to mental collapse, Seattle climbing guide, Don Wargowsky posted on his blog an account of how a free-ranging Nepalese village dog joined an expedition he was leading last November up Mera Peak and then up Baruntse, at 23,381 feet one of the highest in the Himalayas. The young dog, thought to be a cross between a Tibetan mastiff and Himalayan sheepdog, took up with the group after its summit of Mera—Wargowsky named her in the mountain’s honor—and stuck with the group for three and a half weeks, navigating the few difficult stretches largely without assistance—Wargowsky once prevented her from falling 600 feet, and he and a sherpa taught her the basics of fixed ropes. Wargowsky shared his meals and tent with her. Although it is apparently not uncommon to see dogs in Himalayan base camps, Baruntse is believed then and now to be the highest a dog has climbed. By the end of the climb, Mera had won the hearts of everyone, Wargowsky reported including the Sherpas, at least one of whom declared her a magical being. No one forced this dog to climb that mountain; in fact, she, whose name is now Baru, chose her companions. On the basis of what, I wonder, since we are told she ran past groups of climbers willing to give her food and attention. What she really seemed to want was to go trekking with Wargowsky and his group. The expedition’s chief Sherpa has since taken her to his home.
My favorite story in this genre of dog adventurers involves an Ecuadorian street dog and a four-person Swedish team competing in the 2014 Adventure Racing World Championship, which requires the mastery of such sports as kayaking, hiking, trekking, and mountain biking. It is a dangerous, rugged, and brutal competition in which a team is only as strong as its weakest member because all must finish together; the winners have the fastest time through the course. It’s the sort of competition that should appeal to a hard-driving, sleep-deprived Iditarod musher.
The Ecuador route was 700 kilometers, and the Swedes already an hour behind the leaders with about 160 kilometers to go when they stopped at. a changing area for trekking gear and food. There they noticed a mangy street dog with an open sore on his back and “filthy, knotted hair.” One of the team, Karen Lundgren commented that you did not want to touch him—he was that scuzzy. But the team saw the dog was in a sorry state and so team organizer and captain Mikael Lindnord gave him one of the canned meatballs he had just opened for himself. That was a fateful act of altruism. The team tried to get the dog to stay at the staging area, but he would have none of it. He freed himself from restraint and followed them until they realized that he wasn’t going away, and they didn’t want him to get injured or lost while following them. And so they named him Arthur and the five of them became media sensations, as they shared the food and helped Arthur when needed. As the team prepared for the final paddle through mangroves and rapids, race marshals told the Swedes that it would be too risky for them to take Arthur, but as soon as they pushed off, Arthur leaped into the water and swam as fast as he could to catch his friends. Lindnord lifted him into the kayak, declaring that they couldn’t leave him. They knew by that time that they had no chance of winning but they could continue to work to save Arthur, who had already crossed some very rugged terrain with them. Knowing Arthur would die if left in Ecuador—where stay dogs were routinely killed, Lindnord arranged for him to go to Sweden where he arrived just in time to have his infected wounds treated. After a four-month quarantine, Arthur went home with Mikael and Helena where he appears to have settled right in. Lindnord tells their story in his book, Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed a Jungle and Found a Home. It is worth noting that we are not talking about puppy love here. Arthur was about 7 years old, and he had clearly been abused. Lindnord had never had a dog, yet Arthur chose him and this teammates. He gave him and them his love and trust, and they responded in kind.
I can’t hear these stories without recalling that adult wolves will form bonds of friendship with a person they choose, and it appears that dogs retain that ability, even if they seem more giving of their affection and, thus, more unforgiving of those who betray that trust. The answer to my first question might be nothing more difficult than dogs run because they were born to run. They are built for and wired for the chase unless they are distorted by human breeders. Why they run with some people and not with others is more complicated but must involve the ability to read another being’s intentionality and then to trust and if necessary act upon that judgment. All of that—essentially over-riding the fight or flight response to someone or something different—must sometimes be done in an instant, and it appears not all animals are equal in their ability to do that. Clearly, humans have some catching up to do in that regard. We can only hope we have a dog to travel with us and teach us the way.
