March 5, 2003

• Norwegian musher Robert Sorlie and team head down the Yukon river shortly after leaving first from the village of Tanana.

  
  

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  Dog-Dropping
  (dropping dogs)

  
  

  No, my topic for today is not feces, not dog droppings.  It is the canine component of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. <<<This link goes directly to the latest available detailed stats.  That table is where I get my periodic glimpses of what’s going on out there on the trail.
  

  A lot can be inferred from those details.  There are better predictors there than simply the ranked standings, times, etc.  Two very important columns in the table are “dogs in” and “dogs out”.
  

  Veterinarians at checkpoints examine every member of every team as they arrive.  They remove dogs whose condition they feel renders them unfit for the trail.  Mushers also have the option of leaving dogs for the same reason, as well as other reasons such as a female’s going into heat (a distraction to one’s own dogs and a possible source of conflict with other teams) or a dog becoming balky or combative.
  

  Anyone who has lived with dogs knows they have their own personalities.  Canine athletes can be as temperamental as any primate.  Wise mushers don’t try to make a dog go if it wants to stop.  Very few mushers make it to Iditarod-level competition without such wisdom.  One notable exception was banned from the race some years ago.
  

  I noticed yesterday morning that all the teams still had their full original complement of 16 dogs.  Occasionally a musher has, for some reason, to start the race with less than the allowable limit, but this year I think they all started with sixteen.
  

  The Tanana checkpoint, a checkpoint for the first time ever this year with the race restarting in Fairbanks, is the first one where I noticed many dogs being dropped off.  If a musher had to remove any dog or dogs from the team out on the trail between checkpoints, the dog would have gone into the “basket”, the sled, for the ride to the next drop point.

  
  

  From there, the Iditarod Air Force, a volunteer force of bush pilots some of whom are also veterinarians, fly the dropped dogs back to headquarters in Wasilla, where they are massaged and pampered until their mushers come back for them.  (If you want more about this, or just want the dog’s-eye-view of the Iditarod, check out Zuma’s Paw Prints, and don’t neglect the archives .  Zuma (and/or her human associate) has a sweet disposition and a fine sense of humor.

  
  

  Update:

  
  

  At 11:23 AM, Alaska time, Robert Sorlie, wearing bib #23, checked in at Ruby, with an elapsed time of 18 hours, 23 minutes from Tanana.

  
  

  HERE is a great eye-witness trail report, complete with rumors, from the mother of one of the mushers, a World Champion musher herself.

  
  

  Each of the three front-runners, Robert Sorlie, John Baker and Jeff King, left Tanana one dog short, with fifteen each.  Charlie Boulding dropped 3 dogs in Tanana, taking his team down to 13. Jessica Royer’s team, in 28th place, came into Tanana with 13 dogs and left with 11, the smallest number among those currently in the race. 

  
  

  This doesn’t look hopeful for her, but it doesn’t destroy her chances for a win, either.  I could probably dig through archives and find the least number of dogs to arrive in Nome in a winning team, but I’ll rely on my memory and Greyfox’s.  We both recall at least one winning team with only eight dogs.

  
  

  Martin Buser, Aliy Zirkle, Rick Swenson, Sonny Lindner, Mitch Seavey, and Jessica Hendricks, all in the top 30, have made it through Tanana with all sixteen of their dogs.

  
  

  For my readers who are rooting along with me for Dee Dee Jonrowe, she checked into Tanana at 6:21 PM yesterday with fourteen dogs.  She left there at 2:15 this morning in eighteenth place with twelve dogs.  Go Dee Dee!

  • 3:59 pm
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