Friday, April 25, 2008
End of April
The end of April is upon us already! Soon, the last remnants of snow will be gone and our Alaskan summer will begin. Naturally, Budda Budda can ONLY talk about her "ARVY" and how many days until we get to go out again in ARVY! She looks forward to spending three long weeks with her "Uncle" Wayne and "Aunt" Marilyn as we take two Class C RV's all around Alaska and into the Yukon, as far as Whitehorse, and back. Although we won't be traveling 10,000 miles like we did last summer - when we saw 5 Canadian Provinces and 14 United States - we still expect this to be another great adventure. We will start out from Anchorage in mid June before heading up to Denali National Park to, hopefully, see Mount McKinley ("Denali") and all kinds of wildlife. Budda Budda loves seeing wildlife and taking pictures to share here on her blog! We will take a shuttle bus into Denali Park and spend an entire day there. We then head off to Fairbanks - one of our favorite places in Alaska. It was at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where "Mom" Mona earned her Bachelor of Arts degree way back in 2001! We'll be sure and visit the campus while we're there and see the world-class museum there, too. We will cruise on the Riverboat Discovery on the Chena River and get to see many neat things including getting up close and personal with an Iditarod mushers sled dogs. From Fairbanks, we head to Tok, then to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, after a quick stop at the huge, and very beautiful Kluane Lake. In Whitehorse, we hope to see the longest, all wooden fish ladder as well as several other unique things. (Starr's favorite thing is putting the "loonie" - a Canadian dollar - into the carts at the store in order to get a shopping cart. When you return your cart, you get your loonie back!) We will soon head back to Tok and then down towards Glenallen where we will stay and get to visit, right up close,with one of Alaska's many glaciers. This one is next to the road so it's very easy to get to. After we leave this area, we are going to Seward where we will board one of the cruise ships and tour the Kenai Fjords for 6 hours. We hope to see whales, glaciers and many other exciting sites that day, too. From Seward, we take a rather long drive to Homer, known as the Halibut Capital of the World. Although we won't be doing any halibut fishing this trip, we still plan to take the "Gull Island" lunch cruise where we'll pass a small island filled with puffins, seals, and many other Alaskan creatures. To end our trip, we head back up to Anchorage where we will see the sites of Anchorage including Mona's favorite, Earthquake Park. The views from this park, looking out over the huge Cook Inlet, are awe inspiring! All in all, it should be a "trip of a lifetime" for Budda Budda's "Uncle" Wayne and "Aunt" Marilyn from Missouri! Stay tuned for photos next month of how Budda Budda spent May in her home here in the great state of Alaska!
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Before you go to Alaska, there are things you should know about the Iditarod. This race is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org.
Here's a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 136 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race's early years. In "WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod," a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, "All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill."
Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. "Sudden death" and "external myopathy," a fatal condition in which a dog's muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson's dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
"They've had the hell beaten out of them." "You don't just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.' They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying." -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno's column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, "I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that "‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.'" "Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective...A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective." "It is a common training device in use among dog mushers...A whip is a very humane training tool."
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in "culling" or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. "On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don't pull are dragged to death in harnesses....." wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska's Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 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."
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn't anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals' best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
Sincerely,
Margery Glickman
Director
Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org
We LIVE in Alaska. Very "bush" (i.e. rural) Alaska.
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