Dallas Seavey’s sled dog Faloo in the good times/Facebook
Iditarod dog allowed to suffer for hours?
Fans of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race were today arguing about whether it was fair The Last Great Race imposed a two-hour time penalty on five-time champ Dallas Seavey for his failure to gut the moose he killed Tuesday.
What they really should be arguing about is why Seavey is still in the race given what happened here. Consider what Seavey’s Facebook page reported yesterday:
Now think about what the Iditarod reported today via a media statement:
- A moose was dispatched approximately 14 miles from Skwentna on the trail towards Finger Lake at 01:32 a.m. on Monday, March 4, 2024.
- Approximately 10 minutes was spent at the site of the encounter, to which then the musher and team proceeded approximately 11 miles until 02:55 a.m. where they camped for three hours, departing approximately 05:55 a.m.
- Musher and team then proceeded to Finger Lake checkpoint arriving at 08:00 a.m. The moose was later retrieved, processed and salvaged and is being distributed by Iditarod support based in Skwentna.
Let’s unpack this.
Seavey had a dog-stomping encounter with a moose. One of his dogs was critically injured. He was then less than two hours from the Skwentna checkpoint.
He failed to adequately gut the moose. This might be understandable and easily forgivable if he’d turned his team around and rushed his critically injured dog back to Skwentna to get it treated as fast as possible.
But that isn’t what he did.
Instead of turning around, he went an hour and twenty minutes down the trail, hauling the critically injured dog. Camped out for three hours with the critically injured dog. And then spent another two hours on the trail to Finger Lake where he finally sought help for the critically injured dog.
This adds up to six and a half hours the dog was left to suffer (although hopefully, Seavey gave it Iditarod-banned painkillers) when it could have been back in Skwentna in less than two hours and under treatment by veterinarians in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley or Anchorage within three hours.
But instead of trying to get the dog cared for as soon as possible, Seavey elects to go down the trail, camp out and eventually push on? What was he thinking? Was he waiting for the dog to bleed out so he wouldn’t have to pay a vet bill?
Or maybe he lied about the condition of the dog. That’s always a possibility.
Either way, the two-hour time penalty is too small. Either way, he ought to be out of the race.
If he didn’t lie about the dog’s injuries, the optics are terrible:
Iditarod musher’s dog team attacked by moose. Musher shoots and kills moose. Dog is critically injured. Musher decides to ignore dog’s injuries because he doesn’t want to alter his race schedule.
That’s an animal-rights two-fer: A moose was unnecessarily killed because of the Iditarod and an injured sled dog left to suffer for hours.
And if Seavey lied about the dog being critically injured, the optics don’t get much better.
Then it’s time to revisit the Seavey doping controversy of a past Iditarod when Seavey stomped and steamed and vehemently declared he didn’t do it while waving his finger at imaginary saboteurs because there was never any evidence of sabotage.
There were, however, some strong indications that he, or his then-wife, were most likely with the dogs when they were doped, evidence the Iditarod refused to examine, It chose instead to embrace Seavey’s sabotage claim, declare him not guilty and beg him to return to race more Iditarods.
And with animal rights activists breathing down the Iditarod’s neck, this is how Seavey pays the race back? Or is it just karma coming around?
Correction: This is an edited version of the original story. The Iditarod press release had the day Seavey killed the moose right but the date wrong.