The 2024 champ in Nome/Dallas Seavey Facebook
Dallas Seavey grabs 6th win
A controversial, 2024 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race ended somewhat predictably today with Dallas Seavey from Talkeetna, the musher with access to the biggest pool of Alaska sled dogs, the winner and yet another dog dead on the trail.
The last time more dogs died on the trail was in 2009 when four perished, two of them in a storm that left several mushers fearing for their lives. Nearly 1,100 dogs started the race that year, however, and at the end the per capita death rate was 3.73 per thousand. The rate so far this year is up to 4.93 per thousand.
He later credited the dog’s survival with sled dogs being tougher than other dogs. Shortly after he made that claim at the race’s halfway point, sled dogs started dropping dead along the trail like it was 1974 rather than 2024.
The 1970s were deadly for Iditarod dogs with mushers still experimenting with how to race 1,000 miles. At least 16 dogs died in the 1974 race, and the death toll remained significant, though poorly reported, into the early 1980s.
PR War
With so many dogs dead, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the latest animal rights group trying to defund the self-proclaimed Last Great Race, found itself shoveling the dirt in a public-relations goldmine.
Most Alaskans would prefer PETA go the way of a dead sled dog and so too the vast majority of the Iditarod’s small but rabid fan base. But the Lower 48-based group has settled in for the long haul.
The Iditarod, which now bills itself as “all about the dogs,” and PETA, an animal rights organization so extreme it wants fishing banned as cruel, are in a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans with no strong feelings for either sled dog racing or animal rights.
PETA and Iditarod ironically share one thing in common in this war. Both are driven by a need for money from sponsors and supporters to stay in business, and the money is tied to mainstream public opinion about sport and the treatment of animals.
PETA has made some gains in the PR battle in recent years with a variety of significant sponsors of Iditarod abandoning the race in fear of bad publicity. And the Iditarod this year lobbed PETA plenty of anti-Iditarod ammunition from before the race start until the end.
- 2023 Rookie of the Year Eddie Burke Jr. disqualified because he was facing criminal charges of domestic assault.
- 2022 Iditarod champion Brent Sass of Eureka disqualified with two, unnamed former handlers accusing him of sexual assault, a charge he has vehemently denied.
- Three dogs dead on the trail to date.
- And race winner Seavey’s cavalier handling of a badly injured dog, something he blamed on being in shock.
The Iditarod did slap Seavey on the fingers for the dog incident as he raced the 1,000 miles from Willow to Nome to claim an unprecedented sixth victory. But the penalty wasn’t really about the dog, which was critically injured, but about a moose that was dead.
Iditarod rules say that when a musher is forced to kill a moose to defend a team he or she is required to field dress it, which Seavey didn’t do.
Seavey was not held, although Iditarod did later conduct something of an investigation which found that Seavey hadn’t made much of an effort to deal with the carcass of the dead moose as required by the rules.
Following this, the race announced that “a three-person panel comprised of race officials” had decided the moose “was not sufficiently gutted by the musher. By definition, gutting: taking out the intestines and other internal organs.”
For failing to abide by the rule, Seavey was assessed a two-hour time penalty. The dog in critical condition was not mentioned. Someone familiar with the judging said photographs of the moose carcass were taken and explained what happened this way:
“(Seavey) cut a small slit in the belly and a few intestines and a small section of stomach were hanging out. The musher did not do anywhere near the requisite job of properly gutting the animal. That is why he has been penalized for that infraction. The race cannot verify how bad the condition of his dog was in the immediate aftermath of the moose stomping, so that is why there has been no penalty assessed for him not immediately going to a checkpoint.
“If the musher had gone immediately to a checkpoint out of concern for his dog, it is unlikely he would have been penalized at all, but in this instance, he neither dealt with the moose properly, nor went straight to a checkpoint. He continued to run his competitive race schedule.”
Winning move
The competitive race schedule ended up working out well for Seavey no matter whether it was intended, attributable to Seavey being in shock, or the result of some rule bending. As NASCAR great Richard Petty once observed, “If you ain’t trying to cheat a little, you ain’t likely to win much.”
He’d planned to take the race’s one, mandatory, 24-hour rest there and the two-hour time penalty, which was tacked onto the halfway stop, just gave his dogs a little more recovery time after the tough push to lead the field to Cripple.
Past Cripple, Jessie Holmes from Brushkana Creek, a reality TV actor like Seavey, along with Travis Beals from Seward and Matt Hall from Two Rivers near Fairbanks did their best to make this year’s Iditarod look like a race once it hit the Yukon River and turned west.
But Seavey had things well under control by the Bering Sea Coast. The first musher out of Unalkleet, he never looked back as he kept building out his lead on the way to the finish line in the City of the Golden Sands.
Sass, another reality TV actor, had been expected to be Seavey’s main competition this year, wasn’t around to give chase, and the other mushers behind Seavey just couldn’t hold his pace.
By the time his team crossed under the burled arch that marks the Nome finish line in a time of 9 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes and 8 seconds, Seavey’s closest competitor – Hall – was more than four hours back. Seavey finished with the slowest winning time in the last four years, and yet the race took the greatest toll on dogs since 2009 (not counting dogs Iditarod killed in transport or that died in Anchorage traffic collisions after escaping handlers in the state’s largest city).
The causes of the dog deaths have not yet been determined.
Since you mentioned fish, here’s the first information I came upon that increased my understanding about fish and their ability to feel.
It is not extreme thinking, it is the progression, the evolution of understanding and thinking increasingly supported by scientific evidence and increasing consciousness of the world of humans and their relationships with other animals.
Fish feel pain
“As fish can’t show their pain in a way we recognise, how can we know whether they feel pain at all? There is very strong scientific evidence to show that they do.
Fish have nerve structures which are anatomically similar to those of humans and other mammals. We all have receptor cells (called nociceptors) throughout our bodies which are activated by stimuli which may potentially cause damage to body tissues. Interestingly the lips and mouth of fish are particularly well supplied with these pain specific nerve endings.
As in mammals the nociceptors are linked by nerve fibres to the central nervous system, consisting of the spinal cord and brain. It is activation of the pain centres in the brain which allow animals, and us, to vocalize and respond to potentially damaging or life threatening events. It is obvious that all creatures have evolved ways of maintaining the integrity of their bodies – hence the evolution of that very unpleasant and sometimes persistent state we recognize as pain. The building blocks of pain pathways, including nerves, chemical neurotransmitters and brain centres are similar across a wide range of species, including fish.
The success of “pain” as a protective mechanism is demonstrated by its universality across the vertebrate kingdom. For example fish have evolved the same pain-blocking substances, endorphins, as humans. Endorphins can be thought of as naturally occurring morphine and their role in the body is complex. In species such as fish they may help the animals to tolerate pain from severe injuries to facilitate a successful escape from a predator. As one might now expect, analgesic drugs which are active in humans also appear to reduce pain in fish.
Since fish have the same nerve endings and the same chemicals for transmitting and blocking pain and a brain structure which allows processing of pain signals, it is beyond doubt that fish feel pain.
An example of behavioural indications of pain was a study which injected irritant chemicals into the lips of fish. The fish displayed increased respiratory rate, avoidance of hard pelleted food, rocking behaviour and rubbed their lips on gravel and the tank walls. When morphine was administered to the fish, the incidence of these behaviours was reduced
And the fish told you this? Certainly fish react to stimuli. All living things do. It’s a key to survival. But pain is a human construct. We don’t have any idea what fish, or animals for that matter, actually “feel.”
Thought provoking summary of regrettable trends. Race officials need to get it together enforcing rules protecting the real athletes, penalizing mushers who don’t.
Seavey deserved a six to eight hour penalty for not salvaging the moose meat, and not taking his injured dog to the closest source of care.
Swenson, with five clean wins, remains the all-time champ in my book.
Why is it all about the races rules on the moose? When there is a state regulation to follow when a DLP happens. Sounds like the moose would have bloated and could have spoiled some that meat (wanton waste).
Given the low temps, I’d expect the moose would have been fine or at least a day. But there is probably a good question to be raised as to the state giving Iditarod an exemption from the DLP rules that apply to everyone else if the Iditarod isn’t going to aggressively enforce it’s own rule requiring the prompt field dressing of the moose.
Thanks Craig for the typical answer, low temperatures will keep the moose from spoiling. You are spot on and an expert with bicycling on public roads. Not so much with heat transfer. Even when a moose dies in the most extreme coldest of temperatures. The hide and fat will keep the freezing temperatures from penetrating the mass of such a large animal. The same time the hide and fat will keep the heat from leaving the massive body. Thus in a very short time (an hour) the inside body heat will start spoiling the inner meat. inside tender loins, inner hams, and inside rib meat. As that is happening stomach acids will start leaching from the rumen and further expedite meat spoilage. Laymen terms: your cooking the moose from the inside out. Freezing cold air can’t get it. Hot heat can’t leave. There was negligent wanton waste on this moose that Seavey CHOSE not to salvage the moose. The Iditarod committee will cover up their champion, for sponsorship revenues for the next race.
Agree with you on the fact the carcass isn’t going to freeze anytime soon. Disagree with you on the affects of temperature and rate of decay. Having been involved with the carcasses of animals that were shot, ran off, died and were not located and recovered for hours, the tenderloins, inner hams and inside rib meat were NOT spoiled within an hour unless, of course, the animal was gut shot and the diaphragm ruptured. Then the quality of tenderlions and rib meat could suffer.
I’m sure somebody somewhere must have studied the rate of decomposition of big-game animals at various temperatures at some time, but I didn’t have time to do a full literature search for you. I can say the real issue involves how long it takes the temperature of the moose to get 70 degrees below that bacterial reproduction begins to slow and below 40 degrees at which point bacteria reproduction drops dramatically.
I did find you this from deer hunters in Indiana, where the temperatures would be much warmer, talking carcasses left out overnight:
“i have cut many deer left overnight, and i would say about 90% of the deer i turn away is because a bad hit and being left overnight(if i wouldn’t eat it i won’t process it). if the temps are in the 30’s to low 40’s most of the time it is ok, but once you get higher than that it only takes a few hours for it to spoil, some signs too look for if it is spoiled, strong smell, a greenish tinge to the fat (and meat) along the inside of the rib cage (close to the back leg usally turns first), between the hind legs, and around the neck area. once again the quicker it cools the better, their is no need to hang a deer, once it reaches temp (34-38) cut it.” https://hunt-indiana.com/thread/1039/leaving-deer-overnight
On the other hand, deer are smaller than moose so their carcasses would cool faster. I think we can agree the sooner any big game animal is gutted the better in terms of meat quality. But there is a story from up your way about paleontologist Dale Guthrie and a stew made from the meat of a 50,000-year-old bison found intact in some permafrost. It did not appear to have been gutted. And the meat he took from it was thawed out was described as possessing “an unmistakable beef aroma, not unpleasantly mixed with a faint smell of the earth in which it was found, with a touch of mushroom.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-bison-stew-blue-babe-alaska
Alaska is becoming a depressing place to live in more ways than one…watching this occur year after year while our politicians do nothing for animal rights is just another reason why young people are fleeing in droves these days. Enough is enough!
Are you finale leaving Stephen? Are you going to move to Canada with all your other socialist? I guess not. You like the freedom speech/expression in this country Eh!
There is growing public sentiment to cancel the Iditarod permanently. Not because sledding is inherently bad. But because the race has become a circus of bad behavior, poor leadership, unnecessary cruelty and the unnecessary death of dogs. Pretty much all driven my money.
This is not to say that dog sledding is bad. It certainly is not. It is a wonderful activity that has high utility. It can be fun and is very useful In many communities in Alaska and in other countries. No reasonable person wants sledding discontinued. But when it becomes all about “ winning” and the money, things change. For the worst! It’s not about recreation or food gathering or hunting or transporting people when there are no alternatives. It’s about stardom, advertising, bragging rights, policing, working wonderful athletic dogs to their death, cheating, lying, sponsorship, and greed. And when Iditarod dogs no longer become useful tools of the trade they may not always be discarded but they are are often relegated to a most unpleasant existence. More often than not to a life that a true dog lover would never allow.
Great reporting on the race, Craig. I look forward to your insights every year.
We must ban athletic exertion. We must do it for the children and the dogs. This must include bicycle riding, especially since that is exponentially deadly due to the phenomenon of murderous motorized vehicles on roadways.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_cardiac_death_of_athletes
You need that sarcastic type face, Reggie; some might otherwise have missed your humor.
But whose talking about banning anything? I haven’t even heard the nut jobs at PETA suggest that. They just want to defund Iditarod, and their one valid point in all of this is that competing for money or fame can consume some people to abuse animals (or children) because they don’t give a shit about animals (or children).
Dog fighting is something banned in all 50 U.S. states for this reason, because some people are happy to bet on which dog dies in the hopes of making money. The Iditarod isn’t at all like dog driving, but it could encourag some people to overdrive dogs or abuse them in training. We’ve seen the former in some past Iditarods, and most of us familiar with sled-dog sports in this state are familiar with the latter and some of us have witnessed it.
And lets be honest, overworking dogs can happen to anyone who doesn’t pay attention. If you are familiar with working dogs of any sort, you should be familiar with the rhabdomyolysis. In my experience, it is pretty easily induced in some young and enthusiastic dogs who can sometimes be pretty easily overworked.
https://www.pheasantsforever.org/BlogLanding/Blogs/Dog-Training-Tips/How-to-Help-Avoid-Exertional-Rhabdomyolysis-in-Bir.aspx?feed=articles
The issue here isn’t the with the exertion but with the extent of exertion. A 10-mile march on a regular basis is good for you. The Bataan Death March is a different matter, which is why they called it a “death” march.
As in nearly all things, it’s about the dose. Six glasses of water a day is good for you; six liters in a few hours of a day has been known to kill people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication#:~:text=Water%20is%20considered%20one%20of,the%20death%20of%20a%20human.
Labor (ie. exertion) is good for children; child labor was banned, however, because it can be abused. Everything is a matter of doses and degrees.
Imo an occasional death march is good for those that survive. 😉
Note all the literature regarding health benefits of fasting and significant exercise.
I see a lot of people who could use a regular death march. Myself included. I’ve taken a lot of them. I wish i had time to do one a month. I always feel better afterwards.
The ITI could be considered a death march.
Granted no one has died though they come close.
Iditarods problem isn’t death march.
Its some form of incompetence.
Malfeasance.
Note 99% of dog deaths in recent decades had nothing to do with long marches.
The dogs died in beginning mushers teams that were resting a lot more than front teams. Even this year.
What’s going on in the kennels where dogs die?
What are they doing wrong? Those kennels need held accountable.
Exercising for long periods isn’t the problem.
It’s something else . Supplements? Incompetent drivers? Idk . Kennels that have one dog die have a huge percentage chance of a second or third death. Get to the root of the problem. Correlation is not causation. Yes a dog or human can drop dead sny moment .
Jeff king and swensen circled the globe twice with racing miles. Almost 100000 miles of racing counting mid distance and long distance.
Never did a dog die from their exertion exercise.
Whoever is tilting at extended extreme exertion has the wrong target.
A good long march tends to extend our lives.
Incompetence kills.
Look for the real reasons .
Well, there are figurative death marches and real death marches. We once took a friend on one of the latter across the North Slope. When he started staggering around, we decided we’d best stop, get some hot soup and food going, and at least put some fluids and calories in him. While we were stopped, he fell asleep in a creek. We thought he had a died.
We did manage to get him up and moving again and after taking his gear off, did manage to walk him into Kaktovik. But it took him days to recover. I’d expect that if we had tried to get him to hold the pace, we could have killed him.
And this might actually make your point as to the importance of the dog driver. Most of the dogs dead this appear to have been in what we used to call puppy teams. Two things I immediately wonder about are age, having personally hiked a couple young retrievers into a state of rhabdomyolysis in my younger years when I could swamp slog in brutal conditions for 8 or 10 hours without stopping, and loss of body fat, which has long been a worry of Iditarod vets.
Once any animal gets to the point where their fat reserves are so low that they start burning muscle, or if they happen to be genetically programmed to conserve body mass at the expense of normal cellular maintenance under stress, things can go to hell pretty quick. But you should get Mike Davis, DVM, who I’ve seen commenting here to weigh in. He knows a shitton more about this than either of us.
Still, the simple solution here might just be to slow the Iditarod down. As you note, the deaths this year have come in teams that were runinng slower than the race leaders, but they all looked to be running on schedules to put them in Nome in about 12 days. A decade ago, the same teams were running 13 day schedules. Two decades ago, they were running 14 days schedules.
The biggest change in the race over the last 20 years has been among the teams toward the back. Consider this; Mitch Seavey won the race in 2004 in a time of 9 days and 12 hours, only about 10 hours slower than son Dallas’s win this year. But the red lantern that year arrived in 15 days, 3 hours. I’d expect the red lantern this year come close to last year’s 12 days, 2 hours.
This is three days or 72 hours faster than in the past. That’s a big change.
Every dog dies once. I really can’t get worked up about dogs dying in the harness. It’s, honestly, a good way to go. Some good proposals have been given to enforce more healthy rest – and that may be advisable.
But, the real animal cruelty issue surrounding the Iditarod has to do with the the dog lots, not the race. I’m even somewhat ok with the mushers who might over-breed and cull. But, if you have ever been around an adopted dog from a big kennel that didn’t make the cut, the trauma of living life on a short chain with little socialization is obvious. And, if you visit a big kennel you will understand why. Sled dogs are happy with their people, they are happy in the harness and they are happy running free and killing chickens. They are not happy on a chain. 22 hours a day on a chain and 2 in a harness may be enough for a dog. 24 hours on a chain 20 days a month is not.
Say what one wants about Brent Sass, but the dogs he was re-homing 10 years ago were some of the only re-homed young dogs from a large kennel I’ve interacted with that show any sign of being properly socialized – but his kennel has probably grown since then. I’m sure other mushers I’m not familiar with are also doing a good job of it. But, many are not.
Dan: It’s hard to argue with that summation. Sass is a liar. He drove some teams too hard in past races as shown by his teams crashing. His kennel management was a little sloppy, by all reports, and some of his decisions on dog care clearly driven by a low budget. But the dogs that made his teams clearly became family. His operation was in that way something of a throwback to the trapline dogs of the early Iditarod which lived hard lives but were bonded to the musher as one big pack.
Now we have industrial sled dog operations run by operators much smarter than the Bush rats of the old Idiatrod, but who operate in much the way you describe while professing their “love” for their dogs. And nevermind that it’s damn hard to remember the names of 100 or so dogs – let alone love them all.
The reality is some mushers love some of their dogs (and many of them have pets, dogs or otherwise that they truly love), and they generally like most of their dogs but overall their dogs are just dogs. They’re dog farming as a means to an end. Some of them might even feel a little bad that their dogs spend most of their lives on the chain, as you note, but they are in business, and in business you do what is necessary to survive or you get out of the business.
Mr medred .
Great points!!
Maybe rookies should race amateur class for 2-3, years and be paired with a retired driver who is still interested in just doing the trip . Idk
Or beginners should be required to take 8 -12 hrs each check point . Idk
At minimum when a dog dies the whole kennel it comes from should be investigated regarding age , feed , training methods, supplements.
I think two year old dogs should be required to take 8-12 hours each check point. Or something similar.
Dog dies kennel gets investigated
Second dog a kennel suspended for 3 years and forfeit the purse
3 rd dog the kennel is banned.
Its time mushers self police.
Sass is a low budget kennel? Do you real know where Sass get his income from?
At Craig’s invite…
Can’t comment at all on the dogs that died during the race because nothing has been released by Iditarod regarding the post-mortem exams. Surely the initial exams have been completed, but just like in human autopsies, the microscopic and toxicological results take longer to obtain than in CSI-Miami.
But in terms of energy stores and the consequences of burning through them – it happens all the time in virtually all athletes of any species. Exercise is energy-intensive and unless you are actually eating DURING the exercise, you are in a negative energy balance anytime you exercise. The question really is just how much, and what is your body needing to do to meet that deficit. There is a level of exercise in which the body simply uses the food in the intestinal tract to fuel the exercise (that’s the first and best option), but sometimes that isn’t enough and it starts tapping stored reserves: fat and muscle (the protein in the muscle is converted to glucose in the liver, then moved back to the muscle to be burned). How much of each will depend on a lot of things, including how much fat and muscle is there in the first place, but the general belief is that it is better to burn fat reserves than to break down muscle. Breaking down muscle is self-defeating – you may continue to have fuel to burn, but you have fewer places to burn it. As a result, you WILL slow down if you’ve tried this approach.
But that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the dogs that died this year. Based on the circumstances described in the press releases, there were no warning signs. The dogs were pulling, and then they were down. If that is truly the case, there are only a small handful of things that can do that, and as best we can tell, none of them are caused by using up stored energy reserves. So we’ll have to wait for the reports.
Michael: I need to underline one thing in your comment: “Based on the circumstances described in the press releases.”
My experience with running dogs in front of sleds is limited, but I used to skijor with them a lot. More than that though, I have a ton of experience running ‘with’ dogs back in my serious running days, and I crashed a few. In all of those cases, there were obvious signs that the dogs were struggling a bit but they were holding pace.
Had they been in a team, however, it woud have been easy to conclude that “hey, the tugs tight; he’s still pulling.”
In the most memorable of my experiences, I was with a well-conditioned, very fit dog on a hot day when he started showing signs of over heating. We were then, however, only about four miles from home. The trail we were running was generally all downhill. I was enjoying myself. The dog was still holding an 8 to 8.5 mph pace, which I generally considered an “easy” pace in those days, so we pressed on.
About a half mile from home, he collapsed: Boom. On the ground. Seriously hyperthermic. Unable to move and in distress. I ran home, got the truck, came back and loaded him. Took him home and threw him in an ice bath. He prompty lost control of his bowels. At which point, I got him out of the tub, loaded him in the truck and rushed him to the vet to get an IV going because I wasn’t equipped to do that at home.
He recovered and was fine after. He lived to 14, although I was forever after careful about hot weather. The point here is this. Had this been a dog I was running a team, I could easily have described him as “pulling and then down.” I could even have done that honestly while rationalizing what I’d seen of his starting to falter.
I also would highlight your observtion that once a dog starts burning muscle it is going to slow down, which is what we classically see at the end of the Iditarod along with dogs that are significantly underweight as Hinchcliff noted in his work. It was the weight loss and muscle burning that led to all that talk in the late 1990s about how to ensure dogs got to the coast with better BCSs. Given the way the race has changed, maybe vets should be more concerned about BCSs sooner now.
Personally, I also have some questions about what has become a patter of shorter runs and shorter rests. Obviously a lot of dogs can survive that style of running, but my personal experience as a runner myself was that even moderately hard workouts without sufficient rest between ended up burning the candle from both ends. It was detrimental in training, so I’d expect it would equally detrimental in competition.
Well, another turn around the sun, for “the last great race”, it is now all about the money, as most things usually are. Congrats to the winner! Next
Thank you for your coverage of this year’s race and its participants.
Do you look for the negative in everything? Is there any peace in your life?
No. Yes. But the latter is also facted based rather than delusional.