A dog in the team of Minnesotan Jen Freking was killed Sunday night by a snowmachine. Freking was on the trail between Galena and Nulato, near Koyukuk. Iditarod officials say her dog Lorne was killed and another was hurt when they were hit around 10:00 p.m. last night. They said Freking is devastated, but has decided to continue on the trail. This is the second dog death in this year’s Iditarod.
- You can read a notice about this event on Freking’s web site here
Libby Casey, KUAC - Unalakleet
NOTICE POSTED ON JEN & BLAKE FREKING’S WEB SITE:
At 10 PM Sunday night, March 9th, Jen’s team was struck by a snowmachine on the Yukon River between Galena and Nulato. 3 year old Lorne was killed and Aries was injured. They emailed the message below from Nulato at 2 pm March 10th. -Cindy
After a good rest and reflection, we decided as long as the rest of the dogs were healthy and ready to go, we would continue to Nome. Aries spent the night here at the school getting IV fluids and pain meds. He was flown out this morning for further care. He has been a really good boy through all this. He has a lot of soft tissue damage beneath his left shoulder, but he has been stable and calm the whole time. Hopefully, he will be able to recover fully. Lorn had been an incredible member of the team the whole race. She had eaten well and performed 100% the whole way… I was so very proud of her. The accident was the worst nightmare imaginable. We are so lucky neither Blake or I was struck and more dogs were not injured. I thought we had just witnessed half my team killed at the time.
After 3 hours of sleep, we went out to feed and the dogs were all quite perky and ate great. At the time of the accident, we were both sure our race was over. However, on the long run to the checkpoint we realized we would be working through this tragedy wether we were on the trail or scratching. If we were not traveling together as we are, it would be harder to go on. But we have eachother for support and company. We just want to travel the rest of the trail with no thoughts of competition at all.
Thank you for all your support.
Jen and Blake
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