The drug containing the chemcial at the heart of the latest Iditarod doping scandal

Rookie musher disqualified for drug ideal for sabotage

After decades of running an anti-doping program that never publicly revealed an Alaska musher doping dogs, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race says it has now caught the second one in seven years.

As most people who pay any attention to the Iditarod know, the first ever or at least the first publicly exposed as having been caught was then 30-year-old Dallas Seavey, an already four-time Iditarod champ and reality TV star.

After tests of his dogs came back positive for the pain-killer tramadol in 2017 he huffed and puffed, threatened to sue and eventually accused animal rights organizations of sabotaging his team.

This eventually led to Iditarod clearing Seavey based solely on his claim that he would never dope a dog in an effort to win the self-proclaimed “Last Great Race.”

No evidence has ever emerged to support his sabotage theory. No investigation was ever launched to try to find out just how his team ended up with dope in them in Nome. No animal rights activists have ever claimed credit for all the attention the Seavey story generated.

A report from experts in the field of doping which concluded the drugs were most likely administered in the Nome dog lot at a time when members of Team Seavey were there was ignored by Iditarod.

And Seavey’s questionable credibility was overlooked. He first claimed to have never heard of tramadol, but later admitted it was used in his kennel before hiding behind then-wife, Jen, who Dallas claimed was in charge of all drugs administered to Team Seavey dogs at any time.

Still, he was cleared by Iditarod, making him a dog doper no more, and making 2024 rookie Joshua Robbins, the first-ever Iditarod musher found responsible for doping a dog.

Robbins, unlike Seavey, has elected not to fight the doping charge. He said in a phone interview that he has no idea how the drug in question – capromorelin, a drug the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has linked to inadvertent exposures through the skin (more on that below)  – got into the urine of one of his dogs, but says he can’t afford to battle with Iditarod over the issue.

“I finished the race $6,000 in debt,” he said. And there are big differences between Robbins and Seavey.

The drug involved in the Robbins case, unlike the drug in the Seavey case, could accidentally end up in a dog’s system. In fact, if someone truly wanted to sabotage an Iditaord team, the drug in question would be almost the perfect drug to use since it can be absorbed through the skin.

Put some on your hands, give an Iditarod dog a good rub down, and sabotage a musher.

There are some interesting issues here, but Robbins lacks the money to raise them. And, unlike Seavey – Iditarod’s biggest celebrity – Robbins is in Iditaord terms, a nobody.

While Seavey was winning Iditarods to join the pantheon of Alaska heroes, Robbins was in Iraq and Afghanistan risking his life for his country.

Non-competitive musher

Like most back-of-the-pack (BOP) Iditarod mushers, Robbins this year entered the 1,000-mile run to Nome for nothing more than the adventure knowing that he lacked the financial resources necessary to put together a competitive dog team.

A veteran of the war in Iraq and duty in Afghanistan, Robbins left the Army in 2014 and later started a non-profit sled dog business called Outreach22 in the sled-dog hub of Willow, about 70 miles north of Anchorage, devoted to providing “emotional support and hope to other veterans with mental health struggles.”

On his website, he is blunt about his own issues with the emotional trauma that often follows combat.

“Outreach22 began in July 2021 as a project to bring hope and emotional support to veterans with mental health struggles,” he writes on his web page. “The number 22 in Outreach22 stands for the number of veterans who commit suicide a day. I’ve personally served alongside soldiers who’ve returned home and lost the battle to suicide. With the use of my dog team, my goal is to uplift veterans in need of comfort.

“As a veteran myself, I empathize with those who feel impacted by their time in the service. I served from 2003 – 2014 as an infantryman. My military career includes serving multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a sniper squad leader and a long-range marksman instructor. I was feeling good for a while, until, I wasn’t feeling good at all.

“In fact, I hit rock bottom. My mind was not in a good place from experiencing war, and I made the decision to get help. In 2013 I went to a treatment facility where they helped me to better understand my thoughts, emotions, and practice healthy coping mechanisms. After 11 weeks of therapy, I was released and ready to transition from war to civilian life. Asking for help was the hardest decision I ever made, but I’m thankful I did and appreciate the resources that were available to help me feel like myself again.”

In a lengthy telephone conversation, Robbins – who has already become a target for the anti-Iditarod, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) – came across as honest, sincere and naive as to Iditarod doping procedures.

He said he didn’t know at what checkpoints his dogs were tested or how many were tested. He said the Iditarod told him there were two dogs involved, but only one of them – a dog named Mars – tested positive for capromorelin.

He said he was never given a hearing to discuss the doping accusation, and when Iditoard first called him after the race to say there had been a positive test, “I was thinking there’s got to be a mistake here.”

Capromorelin is described by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as a drug that mimics natural growth hormones. It was this year added to the list of substances prohibited in human-male athletes.

Since 2016, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has been warning of its presence in dietary supplements. But that is not the place the drug is found.

In the veterinary world, the drug is commonly prescribed to dogs with eating problems and especially to cats suffering from chronic kidney disease, which is common among older cats.

“Capromorelin is given by mouth in the form of a liquid solution. Shake the bottle gently, then use the provided syringe to withdraw the medication,” according to the website of VCA Animal Hospitals, an organization that comprises more than 1,000 veterinary medical facilities. 

Accidental contamination

This method of administration caused big problems for former Olympic athlete Katerina Nash, now a competitive cyclist, after it was last summer discovered that urine she provided for an out-of-competition test in October 2022 had tested positive for capromorelin.

She was cleared of the doping charge after a USADA investigation concluded that the positive test was the  “result of contamination from exposure to a pet medication containing capromorelin. More specifically, the prohibited substance entered Katerina Nash’s body when the liquid pet medication came into inadvertent skin contact on her hands while she was administering the medication to her dog, nearing the end of its life, in the days preceding the sample collection.”

Velo, an Outside online website focused on cycling, the sport in which Nash is now active, said it was told by the USADA, that due to the difficulty of administering oral pet medication, Nash’s hands would frequently come into contact with the medication, “and the medication bottle did not warn users about the risk of contamination from transdermal exposure.”

In the case of Robbins, it is possible that someone with the drug left on their hands after giving it to their cat or dog could get it on the nose of a dog touched during Iditarod and thus cause the dog to test positive.

The possibility ought to scare the bejesus out of Iditarod mushers given the large number of volunteer handlers and others touching Iditarod dogs.

After Seavey claimed sabotage, the Iditarod put cameras in the checkpoints along the trail to monitor for saboteurs. Given the likelihood of accidental contamination here and the widespread use of this drug, the Iditarod might want to start testing all volunteers for capromorelin and prohibit anyone other than mushers from touching an Iditarod dog.

But this isn’t the only issue. There is no evidence that capromorelin is a very good performance enhancing drug (PED). Stanozolol, an anabolic steroid, was once an Iditarod favorite. Richard Sams, a researcher with the University of Florida Racing Laboratory was in 2009 described as “excellent” for enhancing dog race performance.

If Robbins was using capromorelin as a PED in the style of HGH, which it mimics, why was it found in only one dog? Some mushers have suggested that Robbins could have been using it to keep the dog eating during the race, the stress of which often puts dogs off their feed, but why go to the bother?

Plenty of mushers run dogs who aren’t great eaters until they get too lean and have to be dropped at the checkpoints along the trail. That’s why the checkpoints and dropped dog rules exist.

And some mushers, Seavey being among them, are well known for coaxing incredibly skinny dogs all the way to the Nome finish line.

Kennel contamination?

There is also another possibility here.

Robbins said he did have a dog that was not eating well in the months before Iditarod. He took it to a veterinarian in Anchorage, he said, who X-rayed the dog, performed blood tests and pronounced the animal fully healthy but prescribed Entyce.

The manufacturer bills it as “the only FDA-approved veterinary therapeutic for appetite stimulation in dogs.”

Robbins said he and kennel partner Brenda Howard tried the drug on the dog, but it didn’t seem to produce much in the way of results. So they switched dog’s food, found she liked Tuffy’s and just started feeding her that.

It is possible someone in the kennel could somehow have got the drug on their hands and transferred it to the dog in question, but Robbins said there would be no reason to give it Entyce.

The dog that tested positive was a male named Mars, who Robbins said he borrowed from a Bethel musher in August. Mars “didn’t need (eating) any assistance,” the musher added, saying the dog naturally ate like a hungry wolf.

A man familiar with drug testing mainly from his years in the military, Robbins said that when first contacted by Iditarod Race Marshall Warren Palfrey, Robbin’s only contact with the Iditarod,  his reaction was that “there’s got to be a mistake” with the test. So he asked if it was possible the positive could have come from a drug taken long before the race.

“They said it has a short-time lifespan,” Robbins said. “What is the word….half life.”

Robbins, who was by then in a bit of shock, was left baffled as to where the drug could have come from if that was not the case.

“I had no idea that this was going to be a thing. There was nothing for me to gain. You give medicine to dogs that need medicine,” he said, and Mars didn’t need any chemical inducement to eat.

Robbins asked for a retest. He said Palfrey later called back to say the result came back the same, and the issue would go to the Iditarod Board of Directors.

Then in June Palfrey called to tell Robbins he was “not in good standing” and was thus barred from the Iditarod Picnic in Wasilla on June 29, and that the Iditarod Board would make the decision on Robbins’ ultimate fate.

The decision was that Robbins was to be disqualified and his 2024 race results wiped from Iditarod records. Palfrey called Robbins to say he needed to give back the coveted belt buckle given all Iditarod finishers and refund the $1,049 he’d collected for finishing 27th among the 29 mushers who completed the 2024 Iditarod.

“It was hard to hold my chin up,” Robbins said. “This whole thing is absolutely bizarre. None of it makes any sense.”

A rookie musher in this year’s Iditarod, Robbins finished third from last, but looked for most of the race to have a lock on the “red lantern,” the prize given the last musher to reach Nome. He would have been the last musher had not Severin Cathry and Jeff Reid, two other rookies, decided to camp out between Safety, the last checkpoint on the trail, and the finish line in because their dogs were tired.

Robbins’ dog on the other hand maintained a pretty steady pace from the race’s halfway point all the way to the finish.

Robbins said he was told Mars tested positive for capromorelin to a level of 0.05, but he didn’t know 0.05 of what. Most standard drug tests measure in nanograms (ng) per milliliter (mL) or simply ng/Ml.

This would be a pretty low level, close to the 0.07 ng/Ml that got Nash in trouble last year.

A study by U.S. and German scientists published in the November/December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Drug Testing and Analysis warned that when capromorelin is “applied directly to the skin on the hands in larger quantities mimicking a pet administration exposure scenario (30 mg or 1 mL of Entyce), capromorelin was…detected reaching a maximum urinary concentration of 0.7 ng/mL. Athletes and testing authorities should be aware of the risk of an adverse analytical finding arising due to incidental exposure to veterinary preparations of capromorelin.”

Robbins is at this point unhappy he ever came in contact with the drug, especially given that he found changing the type of food his reluctant eater was eating worked better than the drug.