The Iditarod Trail Committee expects the results of an independent investigation tomorrow looking into musher Ramy Brooks‘ conduct on the trail this year. The Healy musher is accused of hitting and kicking his dogs in the village of Golovin.
In this update, APRN’s Lori Townsend chats with Jeff King, four-time race champion about potential Iditarod race rule changes. King, not a member of the official rules committee, proposes any dog death should immediately disqualify a musher from winning any given year’s race.
I can understand where Jeff is coming from on this. The death of a dog and the need for an immediate investigation before allowing the musher to continue is very difficult for the race to accomplish given the vagaries of weather, vet knowledge and facilities.
But going to a mandatory dq for any dog death is just not fair to the mushers and will cause an uproar among the fans if a popular musher is dq’d for a truly unpreventable death. Remember when Swenson was withdrawn when a dog died while going through overflow in 1995? He was following the trail markers and they led right into overflow- once he was in it he felt he had to keep going and get out of the deep water. His withdrawl was overturned and he was compensated and the rule was changed back to what it had been before. The following year 5 dogs died in quick succession- several of them right after taking a 24 hour break. One of them belonged to Joe Sr. Had the rule not been changed the year before he and 4 others would have been withdrawn even though no fault was found for any of the 5 deaths.
Dogs have died from being hit by racing snow machines, pissed off moose and sometimes from exertional myopathy- i.e. being run too hard. You’ll never eliminate all deaths but there must be a way to recognize the truly unavoidable ones. It shouldn’t all fall on the mushers’ heads…