Dog deaths mar Iditarod celebration
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Mitch Seavey has become the oldest and fastest musher to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in a year marred by an abnormally high number of dog deaths.
After bringing in his dog team off the Bering Sea ice and under the famed burled arch on Front Street in Nome on Tuesday, the 57-year-old winner greeted each of his dogs and thanked them with a frozen snack.
“They get frustrated when they go too slow, so I just let them roll, which was scary because I’ve never gone that fast, that far ever. But that’s what they wanted to do,” he said.
Seavey, who broke his own record for being the oldest musher set four years ago, said his dogs “trusted me to stop them when they needed to stop and feed them, and I did that, and they gave me all they could.”
Seavey and his team set a time record of eight days, 3 hours, 40 minutes and 13 seconds, the Iditarod said. That shaved several hours off the record his son set last year: eight days, 11 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds.
Seavey’s push for Nome was tempered Tuesday with news of the fourth death of a dog associated with the Iditarod among the 2,000 or so that started the race March 6 in Fairbanks.
The death total does match the entire number of dog deaths for the years 20122016 and prompted a call from an animal-rights group to permanently end the Iditarod.
“They deserve far better than a lifetime of isolation, cruelty, suffering and death training for and running in the Iditarod,” said Colleen O’Brien, vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
A spokesman for the Iditarod Trail Committee said more than 40 veterinarians volunteer during the race and dogs are evaluated at each checkpoint.