Iditarod racer loses lead after dogs quit

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA— Musher Nicolas Petit lost a huge lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Monday when his dog team refused to keep going after he yelled at one of the animals. A dog named Joey had been fighting with another dog on the team and jumped it during a break on the way to the Bering Sea checkpoint of Koyuk.

“I yelled at Joey, and everybody heard the yelling, and that doesn’t happen,” Petit told the Iditarod Insider website. “And then they wouldn’t go anymore. Anywhere. So we camped here.”

Several mushers passed Petit’s team on the trail, erasing his five-hour lead in the race.

The checkpoint is 1,330 kilometres into the 1,600-km race across Alaska.

Petit said his dogs are well-fed and there’s no medical issue keeping them from getting up and running.

“It’s just a head thing,” he said. “We’ll see if one of these dog teams coming by will wake them up at all.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals took issue with Petit’s reasoning.

“It’s not the dogs who need to have their heads examined — it’s anyone who supports this merciless race. Illness, injury, or fatigue likely prompted Nicolas Petit to drop four dogs from his team, forcing the remaining 10 to work even harder before they gave up altogether, which he blamed on ‘just a head thing,’ ” PETA executive vicepresident Tracy Reiman said.