Anchorage partiers cheer on infamous “Cat in the Hat” musher Hugh Neff at the start of the 2022 Iditarod/Craig Medred photo
Musher now banned on two continents
Banned first by the now defunct Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race that once ran for 1,000 miles through the frozen heart of Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada and banned later by Alaska’s more famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Hugh Neff, the bad boy of long-distance sled dog racing, has now been banned from mushing in Norway “for life.”
His crime this time?
He was caught with “a limping dog and a dog with frostbite and bleeding” in his team during the 2024 Femundløpet, according to the Norwegian Dog Driving Association.
Neff was in Norway in 2024 to drive a team for Juan Vicente Martin Redondo, a Spaniard who, according to a website for his photography business, “lives between Spain and Norway, where he trains with his team of Alaskan dogs.”
When asked about what exactly happened during the Femundløpet, Neff referred questions to Redondo, saying that “if you want to know the real story. They are his dogs.”
The dogs, Neff added, “are now fine and doing well.”
Subsequent communications with Redondo via Facebook messenger led to his explaining that Neff arrived at a Femundløpet checkpoint with a dog limping “and one dogs was with some ice in its penis. Rules in Norway don’t let dogs on the trail if they are limping. And (the) vet in the checkpoint think that (both) dogs” should be dropped at the checkpoint.
“So they decide Hugh out of the race and make an investigation….They make a big case for nothing real serious. It is more like a show. Hugh behaviour with the dogs is not the best on race; but long-distance race are real hard for dogs and humans.
“And look, like some mushers don’t take care of the dogs. Hugh is a good boy and good musher; he don’t deserve (this).”
The 57-year-old Neff, who has spent more than half of his life running dogs in Alaska, seemed less upset about the latest turn of events than Redondo. He reported he was in Northwest Alaska, “enjoying life showing other people the beauty of Nome and the Iditarod trail.”
He did, however, add that “the level of hypocrisy in modern-day mushing is astounding.”
Rules versus rules
NRK raised that issue indirectly in its report on Neff, who it identified only as a “foreign sled dog driver.” The story about that foreign musher did, however, include a link to a 2022 story about journalists reporting that Thomas Waerner, “who has many races” including the 2020 Iditarod, ran a lame dog in the Finnmarksløpet.
Five of his competitors later complained to the Norwegian Dog Driving Association that Waerner, along with running a limping dog, broke several other Finnmarksløpet rules. The association claimed to have investigated but took no action against Waerner.
The rules for sled-dog racing in Norway are good, Jahnsen argued, but the enforcement of the rules is arbitrary and selective. The Norwegian Association responded to that accusation by blaming “unclear guidelines.
“Regardless of this case, we have taken action,” Frode Flathagen, then president of the association, told NRK a year later. “Long-distance dog sledding has grown quickly, and we may have had some growing pains. There have been some unclear guidelines.”
He, at that time, expressed the opinion that instead of officials looking at individual mushers to blame, the sport should be looked at as a whole, adding that “the regulations are now crystal clear and ambiguities have been cleared up.”
Whether Neff was the next year set-up to be the individual example of how “crystal clear” the rules had become is impossible to know. But Neff would be the perfect fall guy.
He earned his Iditarod nickname – “Huge Mess” – and he was for years a famous Iditarod “rabbit,” one of those mushers who take a team down the trail too fast only to have the dogs run out of gas and thereafter slog their way to Nome.
Over the years, he did, however, alter that approach to racing enough to allow him to twice win the Quest and twice finish in the Iditarod top 10. Still, his image as a musher prone to drive a little too hard never changed, though it likely would have been viewed differently if he had won the Iditarod, as other hard drivers have, rather than crashing several teams.
Winning covers ills
Brent Sass, who drove his team to a world-class collapse in the 2016 Iditarod, was glorified when he won the race six years later.
Sass, who was destined to be banned from Iditarod two years later amid accusations of sexual assault, happened to be a musher with a unique ability to turn on the tears to show his remorse for driving a team too hard or suffering the death or collapse of a dog in his team.
Alaska’s mainstream media was quick to sympathize once the tears started flowing.
“‘I started to have to chase some Seaveys,’ Sass said. ‘I knew I was on the edge but I came to play the game, and we poured it all out on the field and gave it all we could and came up a little short.’
“Sass said he learned innumerable lessons this year — including that he needs to read his dogs, no matter what’s happening with the competition.”
Sass’s opposite
Neff never had Sass’s skill for turning his mistakes into public relations victories. He was nearly the exact opposite of Sass.
After Neff’s team quit on the ice of Golovin Bay about 120 miles short of the Iditarod’s Nome finish line in 2014, Neff claimed he nearly froze to death while waiting for Iditarod volunteers to reach him, and lashed out at the Iditarod for not immediately rushing to his rescue.
This sort of behavior didn’t endear him to race officials, and Neff’s ability to attract public attention and fans as first “The Cat in the Hat” musher and later the Gypsy Musher didn’t endear him to some other, more successful mushers looking for fans and sponsors with money who tend to follow the fan base.
While Neff has shown an ability to attract some fans, he has never shown much, if any, ability to placate his critics.
“I have no control over who does or doesn’t like me,” he said Tuesday. “I can always do better, but so can everyone who is involved in organizing dog-mushing events.
“(But this) makes one realize dog mushing has devolved into pure politics.”
Neff has a point in that regard.
Double standards
Mushing politics were probably never more obvious than during the 2024 Iditarod when the dog team of five-time Iditarod champ Dallas Seavey was attacked by a moose it encountered on the trail.
Seavey shot and killed the moose. But not before it seriously stomped one of his dogs.
But there turned out to be a weird twist to the story. Instead of rushing the critically injured dog to the next Iditarod checkpoint to ensure it survived, Seavey went 11 miles down the trail and camped out for three hours with his team.
Why?
He didn’t want an injured dog to interrupt his carefully planned run-rest schedule for the 2024 Iditarod race. The Iditarod ignored this gamble with a dog’s life, just as it had eventually come to ignore Seavey’s doped dog team in Nome in 2017.
Race officials were, on the other hand, forced to investigate the moose shooting after it was discovered that Seavey had, in his haste to get his team back on the trail and on schedule, failed to follow an Iditarod rule and a state law requiring the salvage of dead moose.
The state has granted Iditarod authority to take care of the “salvage and surrender” while mushers are racing, but the race rule requires a musher to do the minimum necessary to see to it that the salvaged carcass is fit for human consumption.
After the 2024 investigation, Iditarod hit Seavey with a two-hour penalty for failing to gut the moose, justifying this with the explanation that two hours was longer than he would have spent at the kill site if he’d stayed to properly deal with the animal.
As for the injured dog, which was left to suffer in pain for an extra three hours and could well have died had Seavey been unlucky – if the report on its condition from Team Seavey is to be believed – the Iditarod ignored that.
Welcome to the world of long-distance sled dog racing. Neff’s rather sanguine response to his latest troubles might well reflect an acceptance that in sled-dog-racing business, even the long-established double standards have double standards.
Many dogs suffer frozen penises on the Irod trail yet the vets and “officials” look the other way…but it’s all coming to an end slowly over time. Last year, there was more skiers and fat tire bikers on the trail in Willow. Now if we can just get the armchair “groupies” to stop sending these kennels money from the lower 48.
I think this article is well written and to the point — and Hugh Neff is absolutely right when he says: *“the level of hypocrisy in modern-day mushing is astounding.”* Just perhaps not in the way he means.
When I read comments pointing fingers at specific mushers, it’s justified and necessary. At the same time, it’s absurd, considering how long Neff himself had the opportunity to prove he doesn’t belong to the camp of dog-friendly, ethical mushers. The problem goes deeper.
It’s important that mushers, in particular, call out wrongdoing — but usually, this only happens once public opinion has already shifted. Then someone steps forward and declares, “Yes, Musher A, B or C mistreat their dogs — but I myself am a role model.” Case closed, conscience cleared. But that’s not enough.
The real problems lie with the organizations, the race committees, the officials — the ones who keep giving these mushers a stage. They are celebrated, even though their inadequate treatment of dogs has long been documented.
Hugh Neff is the prime example: As early as 2001, it was known in Alaska that he underfed his dogs, wasn’t properly equipped for races, had little grasp of the sport, deceived people, and disregarded his animals’ welfare. I was there — I saw it with my own eyes. After disqualifications, he was allowed to race again, with the same outcomes. Only years later was he permanently banned from the Yukon Quest — and only after massive internal pressure and personal hostilities toward the head veterinarian. But his sad career continued: Iditarod, Finnmarksløpet, Femundløpet. As if each race had to reinvent the wheel.
Race organizers claim to be “powerless” or “unaware.” That they “can’t just” deny someone a start. Really? Define “just like that.”
I’ve repeatedly written to those responsible — organizers, journalists, veterinary authorities, sponsors — providing clear and substantiated information. The response: indifference, deflection, silence.
Mushers like Neff, Seavey, Sass, Bigalke and others — some of them legally convicted of animal cruelty and banned from keeping dogs in multiple countries — continue to be allowed to race: at Lekkarod, Finnmarksløpet, Femundløpet, Norway Trail, Iditarod, and formerly the Yukon Quest. Race officials often know these individuals and their backgrounds personally — and still let them participate. The other mushers stand silently alongside them.
My concerns were ignored. At Lekkarod, my protest ended in personal attacks against me — and the celebrated participation of that very musher. At Norway Trail, where I personally know organizers and veterinarians, my criticism was completely brushed aside. Sponsors turn a blind eye and line up behind the race organizers. And many “good mushers” simply don’t care — as long as they can continue to race unimpeded.
Even veterinary organizations that claim to champion the welfare of sled dogs fall back on promoting “education and information” as tools for change — while simultaneously tolerating problematic conditions. Vets tend to care deeply for the dogs at races; their dedication comes from a genuine desire to help. And yet a contradiction remains: Critical questions about race structures and organizational accountability are left unanswered — often with the excuse, “we’re just the vets.” Perhaps the lure of the travel and the perceived importance of one’s role play a larger part than publicly admitted. The possibility of making an impact is often used to legitimize continued involvement — while systemic ignorance is quietly accepted.
I’ve been part of this world for 27 years: as a dog owner, dog handler, musher, and veterinarian — both at races and in my own practice. Sled dogs were the reason I chose to study veterinary medicine after earning a degree in sports science. I still love them. I love driving with them. I am passionate about them. But I am completely disillusioned by the “sport.”
I’m disgusted by the systemic resistance to removing abusers. Disheartened by the ignorance and passivity of those whose voices could make a difference — but choose not to use them.
Of course, there will always be bad mushers who cause suffering — out of ignorance or intent. I knew that from the start. I believed I could help change things — as trail vet, head vet, board member. But the real problem isn’t just the bad mushers. It’s the mushing system itself: rotten with cliques, nepotism, selfishness, cowardice, and a shocking indifference to the wellbeing of the dogs.
I’m done. I mean it.
And, as you know, the multidimensional nature of Iditarod rules goes back to when the race first began manifesting as a high finance stage race. A person, alone with his team in the Interior, well knows that he and his team “are all in it together”. As that aesthetic diminishes, a snip at a time, it all turns to commodities.