| By Sasha Max 02/21/2005 As told to Sal Ruibal, USA TODAY My job is to help pull a sled 1,100 miles through the Alaska wilderness. My teammates and I must endure frozen rivers, steep climbs through the mountains, gale-force winds and temperatures so low that our skin would freeze — if it weren't covered in thick fur. So does that make it one of the worst jobs in sports? For a mere human, yes. But for us, no way. Almost all of us are Alaskan huskies, which is not a recognized breed but more like a brotherhood of dogs who love to pull things. No one knows for sure if that's a genetic trait or just a miracle of nature, but I don't question it, I just pull, pull, pull. That's like asking the DiMaggio brothers if they were genetically programmed to swing a bat. Some of my teammates had parents who were good pullers, so they got into the game as pups. Other lucky dogs, such as myself, were plucked from animal shelters by generous mushers with an eye for talent. Mushers are looking for strong dogs under 55 pounds adult weight with a quick gait. But the crucial element is the desire to work hard in really tough conditions. By the time I was 8 months old, I had already been fitted to a harness and had a few short runs. It is at this point mushers begin to see which dogs have leadership potential. The role of the lead dog is important. As pack animals, we have a strong desire to work as a group and to have a defined place in that group. The lead dog creates that hierarchy. Humans have a saying, "If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes." That's a typically human way of seeing things, but as canines, our world is defined by smells. If the Eskimos have a thousand words for snow, we know a thousand smells of snow. And while humans may assume that having one's nose near another dog's tail for eight hours is a bad thing, we consider it a great opportunity for conversation. After all, when your pet dog meets another canine, what's the first thing they do? Training days Like other professional athletes, we have offseason training. Dry-land pulling is not as much fun for us — way too hot — and we feel a bit foolish pulling an all-terrain vehicle through the woods. Believe me, a full Iditarod team of 16 dogs can generate a lot of, ahem, horsepower. Sometimes even the brakes on an ATV can't stop us. Before the Iditarod, we've already done more than 2,500 miles of hard training that season. We take our orders from the musher, who really is the top dog in the pack even though he's just a human. But like any other leader, a musher won't last long if he or she is cruel to the team. The best mushers live by the creed that it is better to lose a race than to lose a dog. But there have been abuses in the past, so a system has been set up to reduce the chance of injury or death. Before the race, we get a complete vet examination, including an EKG heart test. And like human athletes, we are tested for the use of illegal doping products. The only drugs dogs are allowed to take are those that keep female dogs from going "into heat" during the race. We have to pass a series of vet checks along the route and have a mandatory 24-hour rest break and two eight-hour stops. Should a dog die during the Iditarod, a mandatory autopsy is done on the spot. If that exam shows that the musher could have prevented the death, he is kicked out of the race. In rare cases, we have had dangerous encounters with angry moose, caribou or buffalo. Mushers are allowed to kill the animals if they endanger us. Eating and sleeping To tell the truth, there are some very comfy aspects to the race. For one, we get to eat a whole lot of food, sometimes more than 12,000 calories a day. That's the equivalent of 16 Big Macs with cheese. But no special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on sesame seed buns for us, we're working athletes. We get a special blend of fresh meat and dry food that is 40% fat and 45% protein. Not exactly the South Beach Diet, but we like it. If we get too tired or injured during the race, the musher can let us ride on the sled. In fact, the rules require that there is room in the sled for us to lie down with a covering over us. When we sleep on the trail, we snuggle next to our teammates on piles of straw. It isn't a room at the Ritz, but we're in doggy heaven. Our hero Like all athletes, we have our special heroes. For us, the legendary Balto is the Tiger-Lance- Babe-Elway of the sled dog world. Balto was the lead dog on the sled that brought desperately needed diphtheria serum from Anchorage to Nome in just six days in January 1925, saving an untold number of human lives. That amazing trip was the inspiration for the Iditarod. Much of the required gear that we carry on our sleds is related to that first mission. Balto became a national celebrity, and several books and movies have been made about him. There's a statue of him in New York's Central Park. Balto died in 1933 and his preserved body was enshrined in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. We may toil in some of the worst conditions in sports, but to those of us who live to pull, this is the greatest work a dog can do. |
| For hard work, sled dogs lead pack |