Dogs First
On the trail to our cabin, the wind shifts & sculpts the landscape at whim, hurling blankets of sustained 30 mph gusts across the tundra & depositing snow in undulating moguls that cover over our precious tracks. We see gales of up to 75 mph fairly routinely. I have skied home ten feet behind my wife on many occasions & been unable to discern her tracks. Say a word & the wind will carry it aloft & away. Drop a liner glove or a hat & you wait until spring to retrieve it.
In the places I’ve lived prior to Alaska, I’ve known snow to behave in any number of ways. Here, for whatever diaphanous splendor it may reveal in the structure of the flake, it is always, always dry. When it drifts, the sugary weight of it transforms into the consistency of concrete. People use chainsaws to dig out trail.
& when the wind & the snow conspire, people here know precisely what to expect & what to do. No matter the temperature, our community knows to check routinely on our dogs, to be sure that their houses aren’t drifted over, to provide ample straw, to show them that we are still there, still faithful, still capable of provisions even in spite of the harshest elements one can imagine.
What a crippling & unconscionable thing, then, to know that days ago, in Unalakleet, one of our friends’ dogs was permitted to perish under the weight of the wind-drift snow by asphyxiation. The image of it is haunting, horrific, absolutely unforgivable, & I will not be able to shake it for some time. I can’t begin to fathom the weight of it on Cody & Paige. Outside of the immediate need to offer sympathy, one battles with two fundamental urges when hearing news like this: the desire to angrily hunt down the culpable party, & the hope to find some justification in the margins of circumstance that would color the situation differently than it appears at first glance. & the problem here is that there is absolutely no excuse to pardon the death of Dorado. Some people want to wax philosophical or conscribe the death to an act of faith. Some want to look at it as learning lesson & move along. The fact remains that persons under the auspice of the ITC neglected to check on the welfare of the dogs, period. He was tied to a fence & not tended to for over five hours during a windstorm. The fence became a windblock, the drifts piled higher, & the dog, a sweet & shy beautifully moving guy who we had had the good fortune to run, was covered over, blanketed, & suffocated. Somewhere indoors, volunteers & veterinarians for the Iditarod Trail Committee stayed warm, made concessions, & forgot 30 dogs, pure & simple. That only one of them perished is something of a small miracle.
Defenses have been made about the spirit of the Iditarod volunteer in general, about the Herculean task of looking after upwards of one hundred dogs, about how this was no one’s fault. It’s true that volunteers are often loving, well-intentioned supporters of the sport. But that doesn’t make them capable, not without education & structure. Conversely, it’s true that veterinarians should know how to maintain basic provisions for the survival of an otherwise healthy dog, but that doesn’t make them do it at four in the morning when it’s needed most.
Was this, then, a failure of the ITC or its ability to properly educate & train its volunteers? An instance of organizational negligence? Call it what you will. When a checkpoint overlooks dogs for five & a half hours during a coastal windstorm, I tend to wonder at its protocol. I tend toward wanting to see the documentation assigning the particular roles at each checkpoint, the part in writing that says that dogs will not be left unattended for more than thirty minutes, the part that displays in no uncertain terms whose responsibility it is at any given minute of the day to check in on the dogs. The part that impresses the gravity of the work upon the volunteer performing it. Mushers pay sometimes up to $30,000 to run Iditarod & they are held to the standards of the State of Alaska’s animal cruelty laws. Under those same laws, the checkpoint volunteers would be class C felons if properly adjudicated.
It is tempting to rant vitriolic & to organize a witch hunt, but that is neither productive nor a proper way to honor Dorado. & so we have put ourselves to thinking how to shape this into something generative. We need to change the way the checkpoints are run. ITC needs to revise its rules to include specific terminology on the responsibilities of those overseeing dropped dogs, & to make those responsibilities known to mushers, fans, veterinarians & volunteers alike upfront. We are drafting proposed changes to the rules that we will share with our mushing community in hopes of garnering support & submit the changes for ITC’s consideration. Dogs need to be under constant visual supervision, especially during inclement weather. On the clearest of bluebird days, I could tell you thirteen things that could go wrong with a dropped dog. Triage system aside, even the healthiest dog on the line needs to be observed. ITC will doubtless review their own protocol to ensure changes are made. Let’s all use this as an opportunity for the mushers, the vets, the volunteers & the ITC to engage in an ongoing dialogue about how best to support the dogs.
It is of the utmost importance that the private details of this tragedy remain with Cody & Paige, I know. But it is also paramount that we use our anger rationally, or perhaps use our reason angrily, toward effecting the kinds of changes that would prevent this from happening again; that we focus on being constructive; & that we all put our support behind the Squids’ dictum that we put Dogs First.
In the places I’ve lived prior to Alaska, I’ve known snow to behave in any number of ways. Here, for whatever diaphanous splendor it may reveal in the structure of the flake, it is always, always dry. When it drifts, the sugary weight of it transforms into the consistency of concrete. People use chainsaws to dig out trail.
& when the wind & the snow conspire, people here know precisely what to expect & what to do. No matter the temperature, our community knows to check routinely on our dogs, to be sure that their houses aren’t drifted over, to provide ample straw, to show them that we are still there, still faithful, still capable of provisions even in spite of the harshest elements one can imagine.
What a crippling & unconscionable thing, then, to know that days ago, in Unalakleet, one of our friends’ dogs was permitted to perish under the weight of the wind-drift snow by asphyxiation. The image of it is haunting, horrific, absolutely unforgivable, & I will not be able to shake it for some time. I can’t begin to fathom the weight of it on Cody & Paige. Outside of the immediate need to offer sympathy, one battles with two fundamental urges when hearing news like this: the desire to angrily hunt down the culpable party, & the hope to find some justification in the margins of circumstance that would color the situation differently than it appears at first glance. & the problem here is that there is absolutely no excuse to pardon the death of Dorado. Some people want to wax philosophical or conscribe the death to an act of faith. Some want to look at it as learning lesson & move along. The fact remains that persons under the auspice of the ITC neglected to check on the welfare of the dogs, period. He was tied to a fence & not tended to for over five hours during a windstorm. The fence became a windblock, the drifts piled higher, & the dog, a sweet & shy beautifully moving guy who we had had the good fortune to run, was covered over, blanketed, & suffocated. Somewhere indoors, volunteers & veterinarians for the Iditarod Trail Committee stayed warm, made concessions, & forgot 30 dogs, pure & simple. That only one of them perished is something of a small miracle.
Defenses have been made about the spirit of the Iditarod volunteer in general, about the Herculean task of looking after upwards of one hundred dogs, about how this was no one’s fault. It’s true that volunteers are often loving, well-intentioned supporters of the sport. But that doesn’t make them capable, not without education & structure. Conversely, it’s true that veterinarians should know how to maintain basic provisions for the survival of an otherwise healthy dog, but that doesn’t make them do it at four in the morning when it’s needed most.
Was this, then, a failure of the ITC or its ability to properly educate & train its volunteers? An instance of organizational negligence? Call it what you will. When a checkpoint overlooks dogs for five & a half hours during a coastal windstorm, I tend to wonder at its protocol. I tend toward wanting to see the documentation assigning the particular roles at each checkpoint, the part in writing that says that dogs will not be left unattended for more than thirty minutes, the part that displays in no uncertain terms whose responsibility it is at any given minute of the day to check in on the dogs. The part that impresses the gravity of the work upon the volunteer performing it. Mushers pay sometimes up to $30,000 to run Iditarod & they are held to the standards of the State of Alaska’s animal cruelty laws. Under those same laws, the checkpoint volunteers would be class C felons if properly adjudicated.
It is tempting to rant vitriolic & to organize a witch hunt, but that is neither productive nor a proper way to honor Dorado. & so we have put ourselves to thinking how to shape this into something generative. We need to change the way the checkpoints are run. ITC needs to revise its rules to include specific terminology on the responsibilities of those overseeing dropped dogs, & to make those responsibilities known to mushers, fans, veterinarians & volunteers alike upfront. We are drafting proposed changes to the rules that we will share with our mushing community in hopes of garnering support & submit the changes for ITC’s consideration. Dogs need to be under constant visual supervision, especially during inclement weather. On the clearest of bluebird days, I could tell you thirteen things that could go wrong with a dropped dog. Triage system aside, even the healthiest dog on the line needs to be observed. ITC will doubtless review their own protocol to ensure changes are made. Let’s all use this as an opportunity for the mushers, the vets, the volunteers & the ITC to engage in an ongoing dialogue about how best to support the dogs.
It is of the utmost importance that the private details of this tragedy remain with Cody & Paige, I know. But it is also paramount that we use our anger rationally, or perhaps use our reason angrily, toward effecting the kinds of changes that would prevent this from happening again; that we focus on being constructive; & that we all put our support behind the Squids’ dictum that we put Dogs First.
Comments
I have heard; you weren't there so you can't second guess, if you can do better go volunteer, volunteers pay their own way or the very best one, dogs die dont make a big deal over it.
This was an unusual situation, but if you are going to have a premier race that stresses the best dog care, you have to plan for emergency situations. You ran out of room, and thought the dogs left outside would be all right is not a plan.