Joe Redington Sr.
Joe Redington Sr. killed dogs to feed to other dogs:
Joe Redington Sr., “Father of the Iditarod.” He refused to be rescued, ran out of dog food and killed some of his dogs to feed to other dogs.
“…They came looking for us and c.a.p. [civil air patrol] found us and then they sent out rescue and wanted to rescue us. We didn’t want to be rescued.” “Then, of course, we run out of dog food and had to kill some dogs to feed the other dogs. We didn’t have airplane traffic we have today, you know. Finally I got word to the rescue unit. I worked with them at the time and c.a.p. I finally got word to them and told them I needed dog food.”
- Joe Redington Sr.
- United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management interview of Joe Redington Sr.
Joe Redington Sr. beat dogs who screamed:
“I find that licking a dog that doesn’t scream is not the right way to discipline it. Dogs that don’t scream simply don’t respond to whipping. The screamers do.”
– Redington, Joe Sr., musher and writer. Vaudrin, Bill, compiler of articles. Racing Alaskan Sled Dogs, Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1977
Joe Redington Sr. used electric shock to train his dogs:
“They rigged up a system where an electric coil ran through the team. The plan was for [Joe] Redington to stand on the sled runners, shout ‘Geronimo!’ and then shock the dogs. When it came time to race they believed the dogs would be trained to leap off the starting line at the mere act of yelling the old Indian warrior’s name. This was using Pavlov’s theory of conditioned response.””The shock device was triggered…and the dogs went berserk.”
- Freedman, Lew. Father of the Iditarod: The Joe Redington Story, Fairbanks: Epicenter Press, 1999
Joe Redington Sr.’s dog Pancho died in the Iditarod from a snapped neck:
“Only a little later, just before Joe [Redington] arrived at Rohn, Pancho, a four-year old dog back in the pack snapped his neck.”
– Cellura, Dominique. Travelers of the Cold: Sled Dogs of the Far North, Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, 1990
Joe Redington Sr.’s dog Nip died in the Iditarod:
“Things turned sour for [Joe] Redington again on the trail into McGrath when a dog named Nip died.”
- Nip died in the 1997 Iditarod. The Iditarod never revealed the cause of his death.
Joe Redington Sr. had 527 dogs:
“By 1990 we had five hundred and twenty-seven dogs.”
– Joe Redington Sr., May, 1999, preface to Lew Freedman’s book Father of the Iditarod
- Freedman, Lew. Father of the Iditarod: The Joe Redington Story, Fairbanks: Epicenter Press, 1999
