March 13, 2009

• How Little They Know!

  Or is it just that editors and reporters don’t care all that much about the accuracy of their reporting?

  Yesterday, just before I relinquished this computer and quit scanning the news for Iditarod updates, I commented on the floater that went out from Associated Press, reporting that Martin Buser was leading in the Iditarod — when in fact he had lost his short-lived lead about five hours before that report went out, and had already been passed by seven teams by that time.

  Perhaps the nineteenth century pace of the newspaper business allows and accounts for such delays in reporting, or maybe Mary Pemberton, whose byline appeared on that report, mistakenly thought that the first team into a checkpoint held the lead even if it was still there in the checkpoint after seven other teams had been there and gone again.  I’d ask her, if I had access, but I’d probably just get a defensive response.  Professionals seldom appreciate embarrassing questions about their work, from amateurs like me.

  I have been reading and hearing professional journalists bemoaning the sloppy reporting and lax ethics of bloggers.  (Bigger bloggers than me, of course… the most attention from beyond Xanga that my site ever got was during last fall’s presidential campaign, when somebody put a link to my “felony flats” photo shoot in a comment on a Wonkette post about Sarah Palin’s hometown, which just happens to be where my Old Fart lives and has his little arms business.)  Journalistic integrity is not, however, the exclusive domain of those with degrees in journalism and regular paychecks from newspapers, and bloggers aren’t the only people doing sloppy or unethical reporting.

  I would like, even for just one year, to get through a Yukon Quest and an Iditarod, without addressing the “animal cruelty” issue in connection with these races.  However, it keeps coming up and I don’t want to let the distortions and lies go unanswered.  This morning, my Google News search for “Iditarod” brought me a Star-Tribune article from the Twin Cities (where they’re close enough to the North Woods that somebody ought to know better) that said the dogs are “forced” to race in the Iditarod.

  Another article, in the Los Angeles Times, says that the dogs, “aren’t given a choice to compete or not.”  This statement is so ludicrous it would be laughable if it were not so despicably false, and possibly libelous.  On any given day of training, if a dog doesn’t want to run, it stays in the dog yard.  Generally, when they realize that the musher is getting ready to harness a team for a run, the dogs yap and jump around, competing for attention.  A reluctant runner would, at best, slow down the whole team, and could cause tangled lines and injuries.  A team runs together or it doesn’t run at all.  Dogs that show reluctance to run don’t usually stay in the kennels of competitive mushers.  If a pup’s personality captures the heart of a musher or someone in the musher’s family, and it lacks the spirit or stamina to race, it simply doesn’t race, and doesn’t become breeding stock. 

  The teams that consistently win the mid- and long-distance races are generally made up of “Alaskan huskies.”  Most years, a team or several teams of pretty purebred dogs:  Siberian huskies, malamutes, and once, for a while, a team of standard poodles, run in the Iditarod.  I say, “run,” not, “compete”.  They are just no competition for the dogs we call “Alaskan huskies,” and the AKC calls mixed-breed.  Generations of those AKC breeds have been selected for traits that win dog shows.  Dog mushers select for traits that win races.

  Beauty doesn’t figure into the criteria for a husky (not talking about Siberians, here).  If you look at the leading teams going through any checkpoint beyond, say, Skwentna, on the Iditarod Trail, you’ll see a motley collection of often funny-looking dogs.  If you watch and listen as a musher hitches up a team fresh out of the box on the back of the truck or after a rest on the trail, you’ll see the dogs trying to drag the sled before the musher is ready:  lunging against the snow hook (or the chain fastened to the truck’s bumper), jumping, yapping, begging to RUN.  On numerous occasions I have seen mushers and handlers untangling lines after a team had been all hooked up, because in their eagerness to go they had been jumping up and over each other, braiding their lines.

  Any individual dog that decides, at any point in a race, that it doesn’t want to run, will be respectfully and even affectionately carried in the sled bag to the next checkpoint and given a thorough examination by a veterinarian before being flown back to race headquarters to be picked up and returned to its kennel.  A team that decides, during a race, to quit, just quits.  It has happened to many of the top mushers.  They camp until the dogs are ready to move, then they go to the nearest checkpoint and scratch from the race.

  Mushers have been known to lose their tempers when a team has quit on them.  They yell, scream, kick and strike out in rage.  It can happen when a man has gone without sleep for days and his judgment is impaired.  I’ve never heard of this happening to a female musher — someone correct me if I’m wrong.  I do know that both Susan Butcher and Dee Dee Jonrowe have admitted sitting down by the trail and crying when a team quit on them.

  A man who has devoted years to training and feeding a team, and has given his all to strategizing and guiding his team through days and nights of rough trail, sees his hopes of winning, of prizes and glory, dashed by a pack of balky dogs.  Most guys chalk it up to experience, take a break, give the dogs a snack, and get back on the trail as soon as the dogs are ready, going on to finish as best they can.  All the most successful mushers understand that dogs won’t do their best under compulsion.

  Once in a great while, a frustrated and fatigued man might snap and hurt his dogs.  The men are not simply disgraced by such behavior.  They are ostracized by their peers, and either suspended or banned from racing, depending on the severity of their temper tantrum and its effects.  It happens only rarely, and when it does happen there is always a brief flurry of scandal, followed by silence and shunning.  Coming back from such disgrace is so hard that they usually don’t even try.

  When a dog dies, as Jeff Holt’s dog, Victor, did a few days ago, people grieve.  Mushers bond with their dogs.  If there were no bond, there could be no race, none of the coordination and cooperation that gets a team down the trail in winning time.  I found these two unattributed photos on the web.  I think the upper one illustrates a musher’s feeling for his dog.  This is 2-time defending Iditarod Champion Lance Mackey, and the dog sorta looks like Larry to me, but I could be wrong about that.

  This dog is Nigel, the member of Nancy Yoshida’s team that got loose after she crashed her sled on the Happy River Steps.  Nancy is out of the race now.  Nigel has been seen along the Happy River by somebody flying over in a fixed-wing aircraft, but at last report had not been captured.

  When an Iditarod dog gets loose and runs away, trailbreakers on snowmachines go searching for it, Iditarod Air Force pilots are alerted to keep a lookout for the missing dog, and word is passed to the mushers as they pass through checkpoints.  Mushers have stopped their own teams and lost time in the race to chase down a loose dog.  Such a dog, if captured, gets a free ride to the next checkpoint, in the sled of the musher who caught it.

  Hang in there, folks.  This rant is almost over.  I just can’t keep silence when media people in influential positions spread misinformation or disinformation.  I realize that newspapers are struggling to survive and publishers are wary of offending PETA and the Humane Society, who routinely tell their members to boycott publications or TV outlets that report favorably, or even just neutrally and factually, on the Iditarod.  I can understand why they slant their stories to keep from losing subscribers, I simply cannot approve, cannot fail to comment, to try and insert a little bit of honesty and journalistic integrity.

  Okay, end of rant.  I’ll be back later with an Iditarod update.
  

  • 3:18 pm
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