Gemma Vaughan
As you read this, hundreds of dogs are enduring almost unimaginable misery on the Iditarod trail. Subjected to biting winds, blinding snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures, it’s likely some may not make it to the finish line alive. No one with a conscience can support purposefully putting dogs in harm’s way. So why are some teachers still encouraging their students to “adopt” an Iditarod musher?
In an effort to keep this cruel and deadly spectacle going, the Iditarod urges educators to have their students follow a rookie musher and create lesson plans around the race.
But having children follow the Iditarod can’t rightly even be spun as a history lesson, since today’s cruel endurance race bears no resemblance to the Iditarod trail’s origins as a mail route used to deliver an emergency supply of diphtheria serum. Very few participants are indigenous Alaskans. Winning the Iditarod is all about bragging rights and cash prizes.
The Iditarod is a life-and-death contest — but only for the four-legged participants. The dogs are forced to run about 100 miles every day. They risk falling through treacherous ice into frigid water. Their feet can become cut, bruised and worn by the vast distances of frozen terrain they must cover.
Even though the race can take up to two weeks, the official rules only require that the dogs be allowed 40 hours of rest — in total. For the brief periods they are allowed to stop, the exhausted dogs “bed down” on piles of straw dumped on top of the snow and get slop to eat.
According to reports, many dogs pull muscles, incur stress fractures or become sick with diarrhea, dehydration, intestinal viruses or bleeding stomach ulcers. Dogs have been strangled by towlines and trampled by moose; some have succumbed to hypothermia. The official Iditarod rules blithely dismiss some deaths as “unpreventable.”
Kids naturally care about animals and would be crushed to learn that dogs used to race or haul sleds may be killed if breeders think they won’t be fast enough. Some have been abandoned to starve to death and were later found frozen to the ground. Most backyard dog breeders are not inspected by any regulatory agency. And for the ones who do make the cut, life is grim. They never feel like they are part of a family since they typically live outdoors in all elements, chained to ramshackle wooden boxes or overturned barrels for shelter.
“Adopting” an Iditarod musher may seem like an easy out for an overburdened teacher, but impressionable schoolchildren should not be encouraged to become emotionally invested in this cruel event, and educators shouldn’t risk imparting the message that running dogs to death is acceptable.
More than 150 dogs have perished in this race, including three who collapsed and died on the trail last year. It was a schoolteacher who reported witnessing a musher hit his dogs with his fists, kicking some and striking some with a ski pole for more than 15 minutes — because two dogs on his team were too exhausted to continue. One of that musher’s dogs died on the trail the next day, but after a 1-year ban, he was allowed to participate in the race again.
There’s no reason for students and teachers to champion an Iditarod musher, and there are plenty of reasons to teach children about the ugly reality of this race. Schools should be teaching children to denounce cruelty to animals, not glorify it.
Gemma Vaughan, LMSW, is a cruelty caseworker with the PETA Foundation, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
