by Jim Rome
Fox Sports
March 14, 2001

Good news: The annual I-killed-a-dog-sled race is over. That means that all of the dogs who managed to make it through another year without getting beaten to death on the frozen tundra of Alaska have another 12 months to breathe easy.

Legendary animal whacker Doug Swingley won the race, again to complete the three-peat. It was his fourth title overall. This guy is the Michael Jordan of dog sled killing, errr, racing. And he says this one was especially meaningful to him because there were six other former champions in the field. Read more…

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by Bruce Horovitz
USA Today
March 2, 2001

The Iditarod dog sled race has become a public-relations minefield.

Organizers of the grueling 1,150-mile race across Alaska have raised a record $2 million this year in sponsorship support for the race, which begins Saturday.

But animal-rights groups are stepping up their condemnation of the 2-week-long race. And corporate image guru John Lister warns that sponsors may need to rethink strategy.

“There is a fairly strong degree of risk in attaching large, national brands to that kind of event,” he says. Read more…

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by Jon Saraceno
USA Today
March 5, 2001

Margery Glickman’s intent wasn’t to become a crusader when she made that fateful summertime trip to Alaska nearly three years ago. Vacationing with her two teenage boys, she wanted to explore and enjoy the awe-inspiring beauty of our 49th state.

Instead, she was horrified. “I saw something that was very disturbing to me — and I was angry,” she says.

Today, she remains an advocate for our four-legged friends who cannot express their agony and distress, at least not in human terms. “I’m not a professional animal-rights activist,” Glickman says. “I continue to be persistent because I continue to be outraged.” Read more…

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by Greg Cote
Miami Herald
March 5, 2002

The dogs are running again, in many cases running until they drop, in some cases running until they die.

The 30th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is underway in Alaska to see which team can trek 1,100 miles the fastest. Last year’s winner made it in nine days. The bizarre competition involves 65 “mushers,” drivers along for the ride as their slaves — 16-dog teams, at least at the start — do the hard labor, at times encouraged by their masters’ whips.

It is March madness of a too literal sort.

Dogs die; it is a matter of how many. The Iditarod toll was 117 deaths as the latest race commenced Saturday. The real figure is higher because casualties from the early years are not known. The figure excludes dogs who perish in training, or who later die as a result of the sanctioned torture. Read more…

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by George Diaz
Orlando Sentinel
March 5, 2000

The unofficial death count is 114, though the numbers lie because it isn’t possible to follow all the bloody paw prints of innocent animals that have died in the name of this barbaric “sport.”

They have been strangled in towlines, gouged by sleds, suffered liver injury, heart failure, pneumonia and “external myopathy,” a condition in which a dog’s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise.

A previous race winner was banned in 1990 after accusations that he struck a dog with a snow hook. In 1985, a woman musher (dog sled driver) watched the race from the sidelines after a moose stomped on her team of dogs. Read more…

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