"Melinda Shore" <shore@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:gciars$b3j$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> []
> The Ontario Federation of Sleddog S****ts has also posted
> audio from their recent symposium. I haven't listened yet
> but I've heard two of the speakers before and they were
> absolutely terrific. Veterinarian and nutritionist Dr Tim
> Hunt is talking about parasites and parasite management,
You wanna see "PARASITE MANAGEMENT"?:
Driving Dogs to Death
I was kicking myself for forgetting to write about the Iditarod
sled-dog race while it was still going on earlier this month,
when I came across two articles that rekindled my fury over
the stupid yet deadly event. The first one was about yet another
Alaskan sled-dog race that started today?a 408-mile round-
trip race between Nome and Candle called the All-Alaska
Sweepstakes.
This race is even older than the Iditarod, but it has a larger
purse ($100,000 vs. $69,000) and includes a rule that threatens
to harm even more dogs: Mushers are penalized by 10 hours and
ineligibility
for the first prize if they drop off any dogs because of
injury or illness.
Can you imagine being sick or injured and having to ride that
sled the rest of the way, through icy wind? But of course, organizers
pretend that this rule will force mushers to take better care of
their dogs. Right. Anyone who would push a dog that hard just
to win a cash prize is never going to care about a dog.
It's all about money and ego.
In fact, the organizers of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes are even
going to allow a musher suspended for abusing a dog in the
Iditarod to participate. That's right?Ramy Brooks, who "was
disqualified from the 2007 race for striking his dogs with a
wooden trail marker."
One of his dogs even died the next day, but since the cause
of death could not be determined, he was merely reprimanded
but not convicted of anything.
Yeah, those animal abusers have to stick together.
I'm sorry, but planning an event in which dogs are forced
to run hundreds of miles through sub-zero temperatures,
ice, snow, and wind and then rewarding the participants
who drive their dogs the hardest?well, that's dog abuse
in my book.
Every year in the Iditarod, at least one dog dies, but this
year three did. What do these young, fit, healthy dogs die
of? Gastric ulcers, pneumonia, trauma, sudden death, internal
hemorrhaging,
heart failure, strangulation, being kicked to
death, being forced to mush through waist-deep water and
ice?a "s****t" with this kind of risk factor doesn't sound like
much fun for the dogs. Oh, but no human has ever died in
the Iditarod, so I guess it's OK.
Meanwhile, in an article that came out on Easter Sunday in The New York
Times, Dr. Randall J. Basaraba, an associate professor of pathology
at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and
Biomedical
Sciences, and his colleagues have come out with a study analyzing the
deaths
of the 23 dogs who died in the Iditarod from
1994 to 2006. You would think that a man who has immersed himself
in this topic since 1995 would actually be against the harsh treatment
inflicted on these dogs, but instead he's just trying to figure out ways
to keep the dogs from dying so that the race can continue unfettered
every year.
His helpful tips include watching for warning signs of muscle
degeneration and gastric ulceration and pulling any dogs showing
these symptoms from the race.
All I can say is, how thoughtful!
And how ethical! And it only took 13 years to come up with that.
Oh, but that's not all: Another of Basaraba's suggestions is to
administer over-the-counter ulcer medications to the dogs in
order to prevent stomach ulcers from forming. Hmmm. Hey,
here's a thought?how about preventing the stress that causes
the ulcers in the first place?
Perhaps forcing dogs to pull sleds weighing hundreds of pounds
over rugged terrain for two weeks or more in horribly uncomfortable
and even deadly weather conditions is a bit stressful for them.
Basaraba says that he is also still puzzled by 30 percent of the
deaths among sled dogs for which he hasn't identified a cause.
Dr. Basaraba, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, let
me just say once again: Perhaps forcing dogs to pull sleds
weighing hundreds of pounds over rugged terrain for two
weeks or more in horribly uncomfortable and even deadly
weather conditions isn't especially good for dogs.
Dogs are dying just so that mushers can have fun playing
"rugged individualist" and trying to win a silly race. Are
the exact details of the causes of death really necessary for
you to understand that sled-dog racing isn't healthy for dogs
and never will be?
It's time to get real and expose this cruel competition for
what it truly is?an inhumane relic of the past.
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