Koro: "I like running in the snow, too, but not that much!"

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 "sport" 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. If you would like to take action to help speed up the demise of sled-dog racing, please click here.