{"id":9429,"date":"2011-09-09T01:08:32","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T08:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=9429"},"modified":"2011-09-09T01:08:32","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T08:08:32","slug":"going-to-the-dogs-of-the-iditarod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=9429","title":{"rendered":"Going to the Dogs of the Iditarod"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>TALKEETNA, Alaska \u2014 Until now, Iditarod was a word that we always found difficult to spell and harder to say, but that was before we had a hand in training the dogs that run 1,049 miles in temperatures of minus 60 degrees. Yes, indeed, better them than us.<\/p>\n

So when the first Sunday in March and the next Iditarod come around, we’ll be watching for Gerry Sousa, the head musher, and his team of 16 \"\"<\/a>dogs. Watching, that is, on the Internet or on television or wherever we can find out what’s happening in the race where spectators gather at a string of small towns along the way…like they do for the Tour de France, only it’s 100 degrees \"\"<\/a>warmer there.<\/p>\n

On a wet weekday in September, 13 of Gerry’s dogs were trained by us. Well, sort of. As participants in a Princess CruiseTour, we provided some of the weight they hauled around the woods of Talkeetna<\/a>, a small town that’s not on the Iditarod map. They knew we were cruise-ship passengers and there’s probably no better place to find a little extra weight for the dogs to pull. We were loaded onto sleds with wheels, because Alaska was still waiting for the snow that’s never far away, and taken mud-mushing. There were five of us in the sled with Gerry at the back and, while it wasn’t quite like pulling six Gerrys, we gave those 13 dogs a workout they’ll remember in March \u2014 only this one on forest trails, through mud \"\"<\/a>puddles and even on a short stretch of paved road. This explains, among other things, why any action photos you’re seeing may look a little blurry or wet, or both.<\/p>\n

As genders go, we were half-and-half…and you know how much the fairer set likes splashing through mud puddles in the rain. As it turned out, they liked it a lot, but not as much as the dogs. There are 75 canines at Sun Dog Kennels, and the other 62 were howling because they didn’t get picked to run. In fact, all 75 were howling until the training session began when the sleek and slender Alaskan huskies fell silent and did their jobs.<\/p>\n

The huskies don’t look exactly husky-like, if you know what we mean. They’re built for speed more than endurance. If you were running through the snow at minus 60, you’d \"\"<\/a>want to get there in a hurry, too. Getting there before the other 50 or so mushers who finish the race is worth $50,000, bragging rights and a new pick-up. Hey, it’s a wilderness thing. Nobody’s quite sure why mushers from all over the world come to run the Iditarod, but Gerry explains it this way:<\/p>\n

“There are very few places you can travel over 1,000 miles and not have civilization knocking at your door. It’s the silence, and being with the dogs.”<\/p>\n

The dogs wear “booties” for the race, eight of them a day, and the price tag for that is $4,000 a year. On our race day in the woods, no booties. We had to toughen up these puppies for the real thing!<\/p>\n

The race has a fascinating history.<\/p>\n

The first unofficial Iditarod was in 1925. The last sailing ship to arrive that winter in Nome, an outpost that’s as far on the west coast of Alaska as anyone should ever go, brought a diphtheria epidemic on shore. There was no medicine. Planes were new, there were no roads or rails, and snow machines were half a century away from being invented. The decision was made to send the medicine from Whittier to Nome via sled dogs, running relays across the barren wilderness. The estimate was the dogs could get the medicine there inside of three weeks. Maybe. They did it in five days.<\/p>\n

The Iditarod<\/a> spawned by that race for life \u2014 today’s race is not a relay \u2014 has never been done in less than eight days, and that record was set last year when the first native Alaskan won it. It was won five times in a row before that by a throat cancer survivor, Lance Mackey. Two women have been the first to get to Nome (“There’s no place like Nome”), one of them four times, and that spawned a teeshirt that read: “Alaska, where men are men and women win the Iditarod.”<\/p>\n

More people climb Mount Everest each year than finish the Iditarod. More dogs, however, finish the Iditarod than climb Mount Everest.<\/p>\n

Gerry has finished nine out of the last 10 Iditarods. In the one he didn’t complete, he was badly hurt in a bad spill on icy terrain. He doesn’t like to talk about it. His best finish is 16th out of 96.<\/p>\n

That, however, was before he had us train his dogs.<\/p>\n

For more on our Alaska adventure, click here to read our blog at Phil Reimer’s Ports and Bows<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TALKEETNA, Alaska \u2014 Until now, Iditarod was a word that we always found difficult to spell and harder to say, but that was before we had a hand in training the dogs that run 1,049 miles in temperatures of minus 60 degrees. Yes, indeed, better them than us. So when the first Sunday in March… Continue reading Going to the Dogs of the Iditarod<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,36,15],"tags":[45,526,710,26,27,64,708,711,93],"class_list":["post-9429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-reviews","category-stories","tag-alaska","tag-cruisetours","tag-iditarod-race","tag-phil-reimer","tag-ports-and-bows","tag-princess-cruise","tag-princess-cruisetours","tag-princess-lodges","tag-shore-excursions","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}