March 9, 2016 • 57 mins
Each year hundreds of dogs haul humans in sleds as part of the 1,100 plus mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It's grueling and not without controversy but one thing is for sure, these are some amazing dogs.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
building your website today at square space dot com and
our offer code stuff at check out and get ten
percent off square Space. Build it beautiful. You smell that, Josh,
that's the smell of the Pacific Northwest. It's a smell
of spring. Oh yeah, that that's where I was headed. Okay,
(00:20):
So we are launching our Spring has Sprung tour and
uh other dates tb D. But we know we are
starting in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, like I said, which
is what smells like pachuli and liberalism and uh pine
where we go in Seattle in Portland. Right on Friday,
April eight, We're gonna be in Seattle at the Neptune,
(00:41):
which we were at last time. It was a great venue,
of great venue. The next day we're going to be
in Portland at Revolution Hall, new venue for us, new
venue for us, and we are going back there because
two reasons you both treated us so well last time.
And we have a very special podcast Taylor made for
your necabou it. That's right, so come see us. You
(01:01):
can get tickets on s y s K live dot com,
our website powered by squarespace. That's right, and uh, we'll
see you guys April eighth and ninth. Come on out,
Pacific Northwest. Welcome to you Stuff you should know from
house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:27):
I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
Jerry over there. And there's some delicious ritz crackers of
peanut butter dipped in white chocolate, which means this is
stuff you should know. Yummy cookies. Yes, but we're not
gonna say who sent them just yet because that will
fall under the administrative which, by the way, while we're
(01:48):
mentioning it, thanks again to Mark Henry. We're pretty sure
we thanked for the awesome steel work that we got
at the Pittsburgh showy steel and barnwork right exactly. I
thought we'd thanked him it. If we didn't, I want
to make sure we did for sure, because it hangs
right here above our heads proudly. It looms intimidating lee
over our heads. Are you intimidated by it? Now? I'm
(02:11):
a little under the weather, though, can you tell? I can? Yeah,
mostly because you said so. But now that now that
I'm listening for it, I can hear it sort of that.
It's like you gotta stick a butter and each Nazia.
Oh man, I wish do you you can do that?
How are you? I'm doing okay, I'm not under the weather. Um.
I am nice warm here in Atlanta. It's like seventy
(02:34):
degrees outside here and like March one. Um. Kind of well,
I want to say the opposite, but not necessarily these
days things to climate change. Um in Alaska, Leo DiCaprio,
where there, I thought that was a great speech, was fantastic,
nailed it. Thin guy should be an actor. Uh in
(02:56):
Alaska where they're about to do the Ida or they're
about to run it. As a matter back, when this
comes out, it will have started a couple of days before, right,
so we'll be like right smack dab in the middle
of what's called the last great race on Earth, the
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, also known as just the
Iddarad or the Iddarade trail Sled dog Race. Did I
(03:18):
say dog sled? No, you said it, but you just
put the emphasist on the weird words or the I
did rode trail sled dog race exactly. We could do
this several more times we could. So let's get into this.
I'm gonna we're probably both gonna say poopy things about
(03:39):
dog racing, aren't we Probably. Yeah, I'm just waiting for
people in Alaska to be mad at me. It's gonna
be years before they get their hands on this episode. Yeah,
probably so, because you have to fly it out, you
drop it in from town to town, and everybody has
to get their turn listening to it. Yeah. Thing I
(04:00):
learned about people from Alaska is the reason they live
in Alaska is because they don't like being told what
to do by anybody. No, they don't. They like getting
pushed around. No, so they moved to Alaska, where you
can do as you please. So yeah, we'll see where
this one goes. So the idea Rode, for those of
you who don't know, is actually a a grueling endurance
(04:21):
race across some of the coldest parts of the planet miles.
That's a long way. And it's not like people are
running or snowshoeing or hang gliding. They are on a
little sled on skis. You could also call it a
mini sligh if you wanted to. And this these mini
(04:44):
slaves are pulled by teams of dogs. And that's the race.
It's a dog sled race, that's right. Dog sled race
held every year since nineteen seventy three. And uh, there's
no like set a number of participants that kind of
areas from year to year, depending on how many people
want to take part. And uh, like you said, it's
(05:05):
rough terrain, it's cold, brutal conditions could be anywhere from
it could go down to fifty below zero. That's insane,
with harsh winds and blinding snow. Snowblinds. Is that what
it's called. That's what azz he called it. Yeah, do
you remember the song snowblind? Yeah? I think so great black.
(05:27):
I don't think he was talking about snow though, probably not,
you know what I mean? Oh, is he talking about cocaine?
I think he may have been. I never thought about that, so, uh, Chuck,
you said like up to fifty below I saw sixty
below fahrenheight. Sixty below zero fahret heeight, that's cold. But
I also kept running across people saying like negative forty
(05:48):
degrees fahrenheight. And I remember we said that once when
we were talking about seam o Hia, the Finnish sniper.
It was like the baddest dude ever, the White Ghosters
something something like that, the White Death, White Death. Yeah,
I think that was it. Man, that guy, it's crazy anyway. Um,
and we mentioned that he was out sniping people in
(06:10):
in temperatures as cold as negative forty degrees fahrenheight, And
ever since then people wrote in and said, dude, negative
forty degrees is the same, and Celsius and fahrenheight it's
where they converge. And ever since then, I've always noticed
there's very few people who realize that, Yeah, well I
forgot negative forty degrees. You don't have to say fahrenheher
(06:31):
or celsius is amazing. The magic temperatures are so cold,
none gives a crap, right exactly. Uh So the route
for the iditarod Um, there are a couple of different
routes depending on what year it is. Uh, this would
be an even year, so that means they're going to
follow the northern route last year, and every odd year
(06:51):
they have a southern route. And uh they are basically
the same route except for three hundred miles in the
middle where it's different. Yeah, between a fear and Uncle elite,
I believe I think so, um, and it either shoots
up or dips down depending but other than that, it's
(07:12):
the same exact route. Yeah, there are twenty six checkpoints
along the way on the northern route and then twenty
seven on the southern route because you need just that
one extra by the southern route. I think, didn't it
say the southern rount is a little harder? Uh? Yeah,
I think the general thought is in northern trail is
a little easier, but like I think there's a difference
in terrain. Typically that makes sense, and you would think, Okay,
(07:35):
this is a thousand mile plus trek across snow in
negative fifties sixty degree fahrenheight weather. Um, it's gonna take forever, right,
And as a matter of fact, the first one in
nineteen seventy three did take I think the last place
finisher more than thirty days to complete the race. Nowadays
(07:56):
they're doing these things in like eight and change. Yeah,
the record the first I did a ROD was like
twenty days and change for the winner for the winner,
and now the record is a guy named John Baker
In finished it. So that would be a southern route
even even more difficult, uh, In eight days eighteen hours,
forty six minutes and thirty nine seconds. I saw more
(08:17):
recently a guy named Dallas Cev who's part of like
An I did a rod Family UM in two thousand
and fourteen. He broke that record, but a few hours,
eight days, thirteen hours, four minutes in nineteen seconds. I
thought the baker was a guy No and baker, I
guess top all another guy named Martin Bousser, who um
he uh, he had the record for a little while.
(08:37):
But yeah, it went from like what did you say,
twenty days for the winner in nineteen seventy three and
now it's like just over a week, and within that
week is a forced twenty four hour furlough, So technically
they might be able to do it in a week
if they really tried. Yeah, twenty four hours plus two
eight hour breaks. So yeah, I bet if it was
(09:01):
up to the mushers, they would press on yes, because
aside from those enforced breaks, they do typically press on UM.
They'll stop every once in a while, like feed the
dogs or something like that, but for the most part
they're not sleeping. They're staying awake and they're just pushing forward,
so they get sleep deprivation. They start to hallucinate. Um.
(09:21):
I read this really great New Yorker article called the
White Wall, where, um, the light from your head lamp
because you're traveling at night. Sure most of the time, Um,
the light from your head lamp is reflecting off of
the fur around your parka, and it creates this kind
of white screen in your field of vision, and it's
like right for hallucinations. She just started to go a
(09:42):
little batty. Yeah, for sure, I saw where this one
lady who uh was a musher said that she slept
while she was Oh yeah, that's what she said. She
just taught herself to kind of hang on and off,
or maybe she just thought she was sleeping. Yeah, that's possible.
And you know, it's freaking out on the snowblind, so
(10:05):
we should mention mush. Apparently no one says mush anymore.
Oh as far as like the lingo. Yeah, now they
say like hiker, all right, or let's go, But mush
originally meant like start going. Yeah, it's a fridge from
Marcia or marsh, yes, marsh and uh yeah, they still
call them mushers. It's funny name. But apparently the mushers
(10:27):
don't use the word mush when they're as far as
like their command exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. So you
want to talk about the history of this sport, this
endurance sport, because the there's really no way around it.
The dogs are like peak before, they're like Lebron James,
of of of dogs, all of them. But let's talk
(10:50):
about the history of sled dogs, about the kind of
dogs that are used for sled dogs. Like most people,
including me, assume that if you were um riding around
the snow on a sled being pulled by dogs, you're
probably being pulled by Siberian huskies or Alaska mala mutes
or maybe a samoyad. Yes, perhaps, Thank you for being
(11:13):
the one to say it out loud. It's not the
easiest one just looking at it to pronounce. Would you say?
Some woyd Samoyd. I watched the dog Show the other day.
That's why I love that they had who won? Uh
you know? I'd actually well, that's how old I am.
I fell asleep before the best in show. Okay, that's
(11:36):
all right. Yeah, this very fun as long as you
enjoyed yourself watching it. I want to go one year. Yeah,
that'd be cool. All that it is crazy, crazy partying.
No I think it'd probably be a lot of fun
to go see and cheer for dogs, although I'm against
dog breeding in general, so I probably shouldn't even go. Um,
(11:57):
but the the some what is you say, the samoiede
and the Alaskan malamute and the Siberian husky. They are
all a k C registered breeds. They're recognized by the
American Kennel Club, and they used to pull sleds, especially
Siberian Huskies. There's a guy named um Leonard uh oh man.
(12:19):
I can't remember his name, Cippola, I believe it's what
his name was, and he was the guy who first
started racing Siberian Huskies in Alaska on sleds. But if
you go to Alaska today, you're going to find something
called an Alaskan husky is typically the kind of dog
that you're gonna encounter as a sled dog. And this
is like a mixed breed. It's a mutt breed UM
and they have been bred to just basically be mentally tough,
(12:44):
physically sturdy, UM not too big but also not too small.
The thick coat and um yes, and uh, not just quickness,
but a strong inbred desire to run and pull stuff
while they're running. Yeah, I saw this. One guy called it. Uh,
(13:04):
it's like they have a wanderlust, like there there's always
some place else they'd rather be, Like they want to
go go go over there, which is why. Um, if
it's when you're taking a break or something with your
dogs on the iditar rod, you have to chain them
down whereas they're like see you. And they also microchip
them as well. I had a friend who had a
(13:26):
husky and um, they are not easy. And this husky
would get out and see you later. Yeah, for like
two days. Yeah, and he always came back, but he
came back wearing like a Hawaiian shure. Yeah. That would
freak if my dog got out, because my dogs are
big dummies. They wouldn't like that, wouldn't know how to
come back. Was this a pretty smart dog? Yeah? I
think that's the Alaska husky is pretty smart generally, So
(13:48):
it was an Alaska husky, I think so. Yeah. So
Alaska huskies are descended, um more from the dogs called
Inuit dogs and Eskimo dogs, and they are basically in
didigenous dogs to Alaska. They came over with the first
humans who crossed the Bearing Land bridge, right, the dogs
pulled them across that bridge, probably, oh they did. So.
(14:11):
I saw that they didn't hook dogs up the sleds
until like the them this past millennia or the one
we're in now that was like a D eight hundred
or maybe twelve hundred when they were using sleds. That's
what I saw, um, but I also saw that it
goes back to time immemorial. Who knows. What I did
(14:32):
see though, is that these dogs, these Inuit dogs and
the Eskimo dogs were um definitely hauling stuff like whale
carcasses are huge parts of whale carcasses to be butchered
back in town. Um, they were hunting dogs, their companions,
they were protector dogs. They were just total um butt
(14:53):
kicking animals that could stand temperatures well into the negative
twenties or aties or forties degree parentheights. Because that double coat, yes,
so the outer coade I think deflects the snow and
then they have the inner coat that has waterproof and
insulates them. So when you see those dogs laying out
(15:13):
in the snow, uh, they're not cold, right, you know,
don't think, oh poor dog laying in the snow. I
mean there can be problems, as we talked about with
the Iddarod when that one dog was buried. Um, they
can also get frost bit. They can get frostbite though
depending But yeah, for the most part, which I don't understand. Man,
that's crazy. I was like, man, these checkpoints, they have
(15:35):
like tents at the checkpoints. How how big are the tents?
I mean, what if more than one team has to
put their dogs in the tents? And I was like,
they're not in the tent. No, they sleep, they put down,
they put down. Hey, they might have a bale of
hay that the musher has, um and the dogs sleep
on the hay in the snow and they cover their
nose with their tails they do, which is adorable. And
(15:55):
at kennels for these dogs, some of them they'll have
like plastic barrels cut in half with a little hole
for the dog to get in and out of when
weather is really bad. But for the most part, yeah,
especially if it's not snowing or windy. Uh, a Inuit
dog or Alaska husky can just sleep outside on the
snow exactly. They used to deliver the mail in Alaska
(16:18):
in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds. That
was exclusively how the mail was delivered until the airplane
became the primary mode of mail delivery. Uh. And the
last mail dog in Alaska retired in nineteen sixty three,
so not too long ago. Pretty impressive, Yeah, right before hippies. Yeah,
(16:40):
the dog didn't didn't live to see hippies. The police
used them uh in the in the gold rush of
the late eighteen hundreds, and of course Alaska aside. They
have long been used in Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Yeah.
There was actually a very famous antarctic expedition in Japan
(17:01):
where I think in the fifties. Yeah. Uh, an antarctic
expedition had to be abandoned and the Japanese researchers had
to be evact by helicopter and they were like sorry, dogs,
well somebody will be back in a few days. We're
gonna change you up here. Here's some food, good luck,
(17:22):
fight over it. A year later, a research team made
it back to that outpost and they found two of
the dogs were still alive, uh, Taro and Jero, and
they were brothers, which makes it even more awesome, and
they became national heroes back in Japan. Um, And I
was like, well, yeah, of course they ate the other dogs.
(17:45):
I've read an article that said that there were no
signs of cannibalism, that they just like like hunted penguins
and seals and stuff like that and managed to survive.
Was it that the basis of the Paul Walker Walker
movie Paul Walker, The Fast and the Furious, same guy, Uh, no,
longer with us too? No? That car wreck? Yeah? Was
(18:07):
he a passenger? He was the passenger in that car wreck,
wasn't he? I think he drove. He did have a passenger.
What was it called eight below right? Yeah, which is
he's not Japanese. No, but he's he It was supposedly him.
I think it must have been based on that or something.
I haven't seen the movie. I think they thought an
updated version would fair better. They're like, who does everyone
(18:27):
like Paul Walker? Exactly? They were used as war dogs
in World War One and World War Two, hauling equipment,
search and rescue. Helps set up the Alaska telegraph line
around World War One. Um, and they also almost invaded
Norway from uh the eastern coast of Canada. Yeah. Yeah.
(18:49):
They were attached to like the fifteenth Mountaineering regiment of
the United States Army. I think it would have been
army for sure. And um, we didn't invade Norway, but
have we These dogs would have been there with us yea.
And by us, I mean specifically you and me, Chuck,
because we were. Uh so you said that they are
(19:09):
bred for there not only endurance, but for their for
their speed. And they actually have their feet have adapted
to take on this train because a good sletter is
uh is that a sletter? Sure? Alright? Good letters has
wide flat feet. But they also have toes that are
(19:30):
dense and together. You don't alto explayed toes because stuff
can get in between them. So basically they have like
they they have feet like hammers. It sounds like hammer
toes basically, but hammer feet. Yeah. And the gender doesn't matter.
Uh Lady, little lady dogs and little boy dogs are
just as good. Uh So gender isn't a big deal. Um.
(19:53):
They're also big at trail breaking, right, So like, if
you want to go out and see if the ice
is thicken up to cross, take a team of sled dogs.
And they actually do this in Denali National Park. Yeah,
and they do it ahead of the Iditarod. They send
out teams to break the trails and make sure it's
as safe as it can be. And those trails, chuck
(20:14):
were used for a very long time and still were,
but then they started in like the six sixties, say
maybe early seventies, to be blazed more by by snowmobiles.
And this guy named Joe Ruddington Sr. Was really sad
to see the dog sled, the traditional um sled, being
(20:35):
replaced by the snowmobile man made machines. And he said,
you know what, we need to preserve this heritage. I'm
going to start a race in the in the fashion
of some of these old ones. There was this all
Alaska Sweepsteaks that was much shorter. But like in the
ninet hundreds, people were using sled dogs a lot and
actually using them, but then they fell out of fashion.
(20:55):
So this guy, Joe Ruddington Sr. Tried to preserve it
by starting this race. Yeah the Dorothy Page or they
together or were they just uh they were they were
kindred spirits. Okay, gotcha. So the first one they organized
was a fifty mile race, right yeah, and like the
sixties and not like the mile journey that has grown
into today. They really stepped it up yeah, and the sprints,
(21:18):
they actually have sprint races. They have all different races.
A sprint is a thirty mile sprint, like just go
flat out for thirty miles. Thirty miles. That's insane, It
is so um there's this very there's this widely um
held misconception that I did a rod was created to
commemorate this, um this very famous run that happened in right, Yeah,
(21:44):
the dip theory outbreak. They ran out of well, they
needed to get medicine and they used dogs to get
medicine to the farthest reaches of Alaska. And like Gnome,
I think there's about to be a dip theory outbreak.
So that has nothing to do with it, because that
is all over the internet, including on the IDDA out side. No,
if you look at the Idea out side, it says
specifically what Joe Reddington's aim was. Yeah, um no, I
(22:08):
know I saw that everywhere, including on our own How
Stuff Works articles that people believe that they meant to
con rememorate it. And yes, this this incredibly courageous emergency
rescue operation of bringing vaccine um well at least antiets,
and I think it is what it was to the
children of Nome before this outbreak killed them all. Um,
(22:29):
it captured the world's imagination. UM, and it did follow
the same route half of it, but the first half
was delivered by train and UM, the Idda trail was
starting to fall out of use by the time Joe
Reddington and Dorothea Page came along and wanted to preserve it.
So it's more coincidence than anything that they didn't They
(22:52):
didn't intentionally create the idea road to commemorate the dip
theory run from Well, if you go to New York
Central Park around sixty s it um on the east side,
you can see a statue of Balto, the dog who
was the lead dog on that serum run. So they said,
we're gonna commemorate this in New York, which I don't
(23:12):
get it londs like it would be in Alaska. Well,
the reason why they did it there was because, um,
like the whole country was paying attention, much of the
world was paying attention to this this little tiny this
little tiny town up in Alaska was in real trouble.
And this doctor put all these telegraphs out like asking
for somebody to bring them something. And the closest stuff
(23:34):
was in Anchorage, and since this trek took like five days,
people were covering it for the for the newspapers, and
people were reading about it all over the country. They
got so jazzed up that New York was like, we're
gonna wreck the Statue of Balto. But that didn't explain
why New York they just got that excited. Yeah, that's
the reason. That's exactly why. Uh So in the early
(23:57):
nineteen nineties. Well, let's let's take a break, actually, and
then we'll talk about the nineties. Yea, So in the
(24:20):
early nineties, as I was saying, before they started there,
there's a ceremonial kickoff they do. Now, uh that's not
a part of the actual race, so people can come
out and cheer them on. Yeah, so they have a
big party and people line the streets and they get
all the Apparently it's a crazy scene because you know,
hundreds and hundreds of dogs, and these dogs, I will say,
(24:43):
I mean, we'll get to the the downside, which is
pretty grotesque if you ask me. But these dogs want
to work, and they want to they want to pull
the sled. Um, I don't know if they want to
pull a eleven hundred miles. But they are sled dogs.
And so when you get these highly energetic uh, well,
they're all kinds of breeds, but mostly the Alaska husky
(25:05):
is what they prefer. Uh, mushers prefer. Um. It's a
crazy scene because they're not like they're they're not your
average lapdog. They're excited and they howl. They have very
shrill howls. A lot of them do, yeah, unless they
had their voice box removed by their musher, which is
the thing it can be. Um. So they kick off
(25:27):
an Anchorage and the reason why it's just a ceremonial
kickoffs because there's usually not enough snow these days in
Anchorage again climate change. So they used to go up
to Vascilla or was Silla? I don't know how they
pronounce it up there? Is it was Silla. Yeah, that's
Sarah Palins, I know, I don't remember back then. Um
(25:48):
and uh, then they stopped getting enough reliable snow there,
so they had to move it up even further to
Willow Willow Willow Vilva, phil of Um is two and
a half hours north of Anchorage. They always have snow there,
that's their motto, right, So they have the ceremonial parade
of the dogs the day before, and then the next
day is when they start, and like the race officially starts. Yeah,
(26:12):
and it costs a lot of money to uh to
put on the race and and it's not cheap to
be a musher with a sled team. I mean you
can put as much as like twenty grand into your
sled team. Uh and the training and you know, it
takes a long time. So some of these mushers have
corporate sponsors. Uh you can make money to like, um,
owning a kennel and leasing dogs out to other I
(26:34):
did aod contestants. Yeah, um, yeah, but yeah, I think
corporate sponsorships definitely helped quite a bit. Well. A lot
of corporations have stepped away from it though in recent
years as far as sponsoring the race, um, because of
all the controversy surrounding it, which we will still get to. Uh,
you gotta be eighteen. You can't just be some uh
(26:55):
dumb fourteen year old or even a seventeen year old,
not even seventeen and a half. You gotta be eight
team and you have to have completed uh some other
qualifying races and place. I mean, we can get specific
if you want uh a Yukon Quest International Sled Dog
Race or two approved races, and you have to have
at least five miles under your belt on those races
(27:17):
and have finished in the top or it says here
mind bending lee. Another way to qualify for an idd
A rod race is to have been in a previous
I did a rod race, which I guess. Yeah, I
don't think that. What's you. I guess once you're in
your first one, then you're qualified. But are you sure?
It wasn't like if you've won, then you get like
(27:38):
a lifetime No. I don't think exemption. That's what golfers do,
is right, well, some of them, some of the p
g A events. If you win that event, then you're
automatically and for the rest of your life. Maybe not
the rest of your life, but I think for like
the next five years or it depends on the Then
you get automatically qualified. That makes sense, all right, So
what's uh? What's what does a sled team look like?
(28:01):
They look pretty good. You got your musher, that's the
guy standing on back telling the dogs what to do. Yes,
that's right, um, I mean the gender neutral guy. Um.
And then you have a team of dogs and depending
on what you're doing UM with the idea in particular,
you have to start I think with sixteen dogs, right,
(28:22):
and you have to finish with twelve. No, twelve to sixteen,
and they have to finish with ten. So you can
have up to six dogs die along the way and
not get disqualified from the idea. Rod Technically, um and
in the lead are the very appropriate named lead dogs.
These are your smartest, fastest dogs. I was reading about
(28:45):
these dogs. These dogs are amazing dogs, so smart that
they will even disobey their owner if they're like, dude,
that's a cliff. Don't tell me too much. I know
you can't see because you're snow blind in the Aussie fashion,
So just leave it to me to ignore your a
man and steer us to the left. And so when
that lead dog starts to go, the dogs immediately behind them,
the point dogs or the what are they called the
(29:09):
swing dogs? They also are called point too. I think
they're the ones who actually get the rest of the
team to turn with them. Yeah, and uh, they call
them swings because you know you have to. You can't
cut it short. You gotta swing wide around obstacles and
These dogs are smart enough to know to do that.
So you've got those are the first four dogs you have.
Are the lead dogs and the swing or point dogs
(29:30):
behind them. You're gonna have a couple of pairs of
what are called team dogs. These dogs are just really
good at pulling, working well with others. Yeah, they're like
the role player on the NBA bench. Yeah, they're the
solid basketball players, the Draymond Greens. But sure, but they're
not going to be starting an All Star game. No,
(29:50):
but they they they may have enough spunking spirit. You
get the rest of the team going, um, yeah, the
Draymond Greens. And then at the back, right in front
of the sled are the wheels, the wheelers. Yes, and
they are the strongest of the bunch, supposedly, And uh,
those are the dogs. But the dogs are attached to
(30:13):
the sled or else you're in big trouble. You have
a bunch of really fast dogs running together and a
mushard who's left behind. How funny would that be? It
would be funny to everybody else, but the mush rights
and um, the sled connects to the dogs through the
main line or the toe line right or the gang line.
I think it's the other name for it. And this
(30:33):
is basically just a line that goes from the sled
all the way up to the lead dogs, and all
the dogs are connected to this thing. That's right. Then
the dogs are connect to the lead line and they
pull on that toe line via tug lines that are
connected to their harnesses. That's right. Uh. And the dog
is wearing a color and a harness. Um, they don't. Actually,
(30:55):
it's not like they don't have reins. Like a horse,
They go on command. Um. I have seen like a whip.
They stopped us whips, but they used to fairly recently,
got you. Yeah, they go mushus no mush no more
mush no more whips. Things are changing big time as
(31:15):
a matter of fact. Um. And then you have the
So the dog's collars can is connected by a collar line,
I think right. So, Uh, you have to condition these dogs.
You know, they don't come out of the uh the
womb ready to run a thousand miles. They want to. Yeah,
they've got some genetics going on for sure, but absolutely
(31:35):
takes some shaping as well. But you have to condition
them over time, uh, from the time they're little pups
to start them out wearing the collar and the harness
to get used to it. To pulling little light things
around the house that's adorable, yeah, um. To building up
their endurance in their in their strength over time, just
like you know any endurance race, if you're a marathon
(31:57):
or the same deal. You don't go out and run
twenty six miles. And you also have to be um.
You have to understand um verbal commands obscure ones too,
like hike not much, though no one says much to
a dog. Let's go all right? All those mean let's
(32:19):
let's go right. Yeah, I think that's how they say
it easy if you want to slow down and we
couldn't decide as a G I think it's g I
think I think it's gum. Or come haw to go
left or right? Haw is definitely haw uh straight on
(32:39):
and then whoa if you're gonna stop. It makes sense
like with a horse, and imagine straight on means keep
on going. They also definitely need to learn to work together,
which is not necessarily in every breed of dogs makeup.
You know, dogs have alpha dogs and their pack dogs,
and you have a lead dog that that lead dog
(33:00):
and fulfill that role. But you also want dogs that
can that aren't like constantly jockeying for position, that they
know their place and they're willing to work together with
the other dogs. Temperaments a big deal for sure. And
then um, you also when you're running the Iditara and
you're putting a sled team together, you out you want
to pick dogs of similar build, similar gait and speed.
(33:22):
You want them to basically move as one. And so
a lot of the selection and your dogs that you
put together for a team is going to have a
huge impact on the like how they pay well together
but not and not just temperamentally but physically and in
the way that they move as well. Yeah, and the dogs, uh,
they can be big um, But generally I think for
(33:44):
the endurance races, you want a dog this between like
forty and sixty pounds and how old are they Well, um,
if you want to be a sled dog, you're probably
at least two. But you would think you know, like
if you look at thoroughbred horse racing, those horses are
retired by like age three, I think maybe four. These
dogs will pull sleds and compete in like races up
(34:09):
until age ten. Yeah, not bad. And again at the
Nali National Park. They get retired at age nine. Uh.
They're eating a lot. Uh. They need to eat around
ten thousand calories a day while they're doing these races. Uh.
That's about two thousand pounds of food per team and
it's mostly just meat. But they have this stuff. It's
(34:29):
sort of like how can the Appalachian Trail? They have
it flown ahead and dropped off at all these checkpoints,
so the food in your bourbon is waiting there when
you get there. There was a guy um Man what
was his name, Macki Lance Mackie. He was like the
number one I did a rod racer for several years
and um, he was not well liked among all I
(34:52):
did a rod racers because he used to just do
things like smoke pot like while he was just riding
along on the I did or trail. I saw the
drugs and alcohol was the thing with Musher's. I don't
know if that's how widespread it is, but well, it's
like a marijuana is a banned substance now even apparently
they're talking about legalizing it in Alaska and the I
(35:13):
did a rude committee is like not still can't smoke pot?
Lance Mackie, we're looking at you. Um. But apparently according
to this New Yorker article, great New Yorker article, the
White Wall check it out. ESPN has a really good
one too. Um. They said that he quit and did
the did the race straight and still one once I think,
and then smoke tons of pot right afterwards to celebrate. Yeah. Um.
(35:35):
But the along this trail, um, you were saying that
that the dogs eat mostly meat. They eat different types
of meat. They also eat like, um, nutritional supplements. And
in the White Wall the article they describe what Dallas
stevis feeding his dogs at One Stop, and he's it's
like a four course meal. He starts with a broth
(35:57):
um with kibble and some nutritional supplements, and then they
eat some fish steaks, you know, they have some beef
and when they finish it all off with chicken skin
like all fat. That sounds delicious. Yeah, And the dogs
are eating like ten to fourteen thousand calories a day,
which is like ten times the cloric intake of an
active dog of about the same size, ten times just
(36:20):
in a day. Yeah, because well they're they're running like
over a hundred miles a day. It's crazy. Uh, they're
wearing little doggy booties now, um, because it's very rough
on their feet obviously running over this ice and snow
and rough terrain. Uh. And a team will go through
as many as two thousand pairs or this has two
(36:41):
thousand booties. Maybe a thousand pairs. Yeah, well no, yeah,
a thousand pairs. Would it be a pair before? Yeah,
a dog pair of before? So five hundred dog pair.
We just created a new thing. It's like a Baker's dozen.
So two thousand booties we'll go through. Um, but they're
(37:02):
still going to get their feet beat up, their paws
beat up pretty bad. Well yeah, because dogs perspire by
panting and on the bottoms of their feet, So you
can't just wear um booties all the time. So that
one of the mushers things that they really have to
be paying attention to is a good time to give
the dogs feet to rest without the booties, to let
them basically perspire so they don't overheat. Yeah, And I
(37:24):
get the feeling that if they're really hauling and they
see that they've lost a few booties, they're not like, oh,
let me stop and put a fresh booty. You know,
They're they're mushing forward so Chuck, let's take a break, um,
and uh, we'll come back and talk about some other stuff.
(37:59):
All right, we've talked about dogs, We've talked a little
bit about mushers. But one thing that makes a good
musher is granted, they are standing. They're not running. Well,
sometimes they're running along, but they're basically they're definitely standing.
But it's tough. It's not like I get the feeling.
It's like if you've ever been snow skiing or water skiing,
(38:22):
it's hard on your legs. It's not like, oh, I'm
just standing here or taking a joy ride. Ye have
over over bumpy terrain um for hours and hours and
hours basically for eight days. It's gonna be strong and
have a lot of stamin in your own self. You
also have to put up with again you have to
be yeah, mentally tough. You have to put up with
(38:42):
the hallucinations and um not make really bad decisions while
you're on the trail and it's night and you haven't slept. Um.
And uh, you also need to pack. Well, yeah, you
want to bring everything. It's sort of like backpacking everything
you need but as light as you can make it.
And you there's actually stuff you have to bring just
(39:06):
to survive. You gotta have a sleeping bag, sleeping bag
and axe, snowshoes, a little cooking pot and fuel so
you can boil water. Sure, um, and then you also, um,
most of them carry a gun. The Dallas CV guy
said that he carries a three fifty seven with him
and he actually shot a moose with it that was
charging him and his dogs. And no, because this is
(39:30):
his long time rival, the the young upstart, the clean Liver,
whose father Straight Edge U was also I Did a
Rod winner from two thirteen. I think it very much
seems like a family thing. I saw a lot of
people with the same last names. Um. And then the
other big essential gear is the sled itself, which there's
(39:52):
not like. You don't go to the official I Did
a Rod sled store and buy your sled and go, okay,
I'm ready. You you constructed yourself? Oh really, yeah, you
definitely can'. I'm sure there's sleds out there that you
can buy, but you can also build him yourself. The
I Did a Rod only requires that quote some type
of sled or toboggan must be drawn, right, so you
want that to be light as well. Um, probably about
(40:13):
a hundred pounds empty, more than twice that full. Yeah,
plus your own human body. Yeah, which you know, maybe
drop a few pounds before the race. And again, I'm
sorry to keep going to the same well, but the
Dallas TV cat, the reason we I keep mentioning him
is like he is really your hero. He's he's fine,
(40:34):
he's I don't know enough about him to know whether
he's my hero or not, but he is definitely reshaped
the um. I did a rod race um with some
of the stuff he's doing. One of the things he's
doing is it's making I did a rod racers like
more athletic um. Like if they're going up a hill,
he'll jump off of the runners and run behind the
(40:56):
sled rather than just get a ride with the dogs,
which of course increases your time, but it's also easier
on the dogs. It's just you have to be not
a tub and you have to be able to run
up in clins for eight days when you need to.
You know, Yeah, that's it can't be fun. Running in
the snow is not fun, No, but it helps you
win and it's easier on your dogs, and if you win,
(41:19):
you're gonna get some dough. They split the money up. Um,
you can actually finish in last place and still get
some money. Um, but you're gonna get obviously, the grand
prize winner will win a nice fat purse in the
six figure range, a really nice purse, very nice. Uh.
(41:39):
Then there are other little prizes along the way, like
a field day elementary school. If you reach the halfway
the first much are muchure to go to to the
halfway point. Um, in odd number of years it would
be I did a right itself and then in cripple Uh,
in the even number of years, you're gonna get yourself
the g C. I. Dorothy pay Age Halfway Award and
(42:02):
three thousand dollars in gold nuggets gold nuggets. That's pretty neat. Yeah.
Can you imagine every once a while they're like, we
didn't have the gold nuggets, but here's three thousand dollars.
I'd be like, I want my gold nuggets three thousand
dollars worth. Um, you bite into it, just check its authenticity,
and you call the guy who gives your dinner cookie. Yeah. Yeah,
(42:22):
that's the Alaska way. Uh. What else? The top lead
dog is gonna take home the Lolly Medley Memorial Golden
Harness Award. Of course everybody knows that. And then um
there's other towns where if you're the first one to
make it to say on Veek or Ruby, um, you'll
get a seven course meal and thirty five hundred one
dollar bills because it just seems like more not like
(42:45):
gold nuggets, but thirty five hundred one dollar bills is
pretty great. These are almost like joke gifts. Yeah. Well
Wells Fargo, which is five dollars in pennies you know,
slows you down. Um. Wells Fargo, which is uh one
of the bigger along with x On Mobile, the two
biggest corporate sponsors of the Idea Rode, offers them like
(43:07):
a the Red Lantern awards the last place finisher. Yeah,
I think that's from the Widows Lamp. At the finish line,
they have the Widows Lamp, which is a a lamp
that they leave burning until the last musher and team
has crossed. And that's from the old days, from they
would keep a kerosene lamp burning for people that were
(43:29):
still out there on the trails. Well Wells Fargo is
the old timey multinational bank. Look at their look at
their homespun logo with the stage coach, and it's pretty neat.
They're just Western cowboy bankers, right. And it's funny you
mentioned stage coach too, because you're like, wow, this is
(43:50):
crazy using dogs and pull sleds and you think what
you do with other stuff horses. This is using dogs
as draft animals. Absolutely, that's all totally fine. Uh. So
they have veterinarians on hand. Um, this article said around
thirty seven, So weird, and there's a little bit of
(44:11):
weirdness in this article, choke. But they do have veterinarians
on hand to to examin them during the race, uh,
before the race, to make sure they're all healthy. Um.
But dogs die. Dogs can die of over exertion. Um.
They can have trouble catching their breath. They can asphyxiate
on vomit um. They can fall through the ice is
(44:34):
a big one. As a matter of fact, falling through
the ice is not necessarily a death sentence, even when
it's negative forty degrees below. Sometimes I'll run right out
of that thing. Yeah, because they're Alaskan huskies right. Um.
But there's this very famous story from four there's an
I did a odd winner named Susan Butcher. And she
(44:55):
won multiple times. But her team in four UM was
let out of after falling through ice, but her two
lead dogs pulled the rest of the team out just
like one dog at a time until the whole team
had made it out of the ice water and continued
on kept going. Yeah. Um. And then the next year,
(45:18):
that same poor lead dog got kicked by a moose
and they didn't finish that year. I believe it had
to recuperate. He did had to recuperate for a year. UM.
I believe a hundred and forty four dogs have died
since the first race. UH. In the past few years
they haven't had any deaths, but generally one or two
dogs are going to die. Two thousand nine was a
(45:40):
bad year. UM. One of the worst and most recent years. UH.
There was like, I think six dogs that died that
year two thousand, I think eleven or twelve. There was
one dog that died, but it died terribly. UM. He
died from being asphyxiated by the snow after he was
left at a checkpoint by his musher in the hands
(46:02):
of like the local vets at the checkpoint, and they
tied him up and the weather got bad and no
one brought him in and he was a snow drift
just built over the dog. He couldn't go anywhere and
he suffocated in the snow. Um that that was a
big deal. Um. Yeah, Pete actually had to apologize. They
condemned the musher. They said that they just left this dog. No, no,
(46:26):
like they left him officially. No, no, But Peter didn't
say that. Petter said they just left this dog behind
it h and had they were had a lawsuit brought
against them, and they came out and apologized. Said, oh,
actually we know it wasn't on you. You left them
in the care of somebody else. And they said the
(46:46):
person said that the apology was weak. If you're gonna agitate,
even if it's four animal rights, you should agitate correctly. No, agreed.
Can I get your facts straight before you agitate, You know,
like there's enough, there's enough there that you can you
can get your facts straight and still agitate just as effectively. Yeah,
we're talking about dehydration, ulcers, hypothermia, heart problems, and let's
(47:08):
talk about those ulcers. Chuck. There was a study from
Oklahoma State University UM of a decent number of sled
dogs on the Iditarod trail that UM found a lot
of them had anemia because they had stomach ulcers and
they were bleeding slowly and developing anemia as a result.
And they got stomach ulcers from being fed aspirin and
(47:29):
anti inflammatory drugs like advil to keep them going to
keep their joints from hurting, and the the veterinary study
suggested that UM, the dogs be fed and acids to
combat the ulcers. So they're getting they're being driven a
thousand miles miles over eight days, they're given drugs to
(47:52):
keep their joints from hurting, they're getting ulcers from the drugs,
they're getting anemia from the ulcers, and this VET study
said that they should be given and acids. Yeah. One
of the vets, Uh Scott More, he was a volunteer
for the race a few years ago, said he saw
dogs with torn achilles tendons, dehydration, diarrhea, hypothermia, hyperthermia, inflammation
in the wrist, and soreness in the shoulders from the harnesses.
(48:16):
I didn't know much about this. I just saw it
on the news every now and then. I thought, oh,
neat these working dogs out racing. But um, I'm gonna
go ahead and say no more I did, or odd
shut it down. Oh yeah, yeah, you're killing dogs for
the entertainment of people. I know it's rare, and I
know these mushers really care for these dogs and care
(48:38):
for their well being and do all they can to
ensure their safety. But to me, if dogs are dying
at all in training, in the race, after the race,
then you just shouldn't do anymore, or at the very least, uh,
you know, shorten the race, or do something to ensure
that these dogs don't die. Ever, So there's there's a
there's a couple of schools that thought. Peter is very
(48:58):
much opposed to the Iditarod and dog sled racing in general.
They're like, just don't hook a dog up to a sled.
That's our stance. Now are they against recreational sledding? There
against all kinds of sledding, every every sleds What I
couldn't find if you had like six dogs and you
sled it over to your friends and they were your
family dogs, Peter says, don't do that. I thought it
(49:21):
was just competition. There there's a group called the Sled
Dog Action Coalition. Yes, they are opposed to the iditarod,
But they don't have a problem with humane and well
done recreational mushing. Um. The Humane Society of the United
States opposed to the ididar rod. But um is uh,
(49:46):
they don't have a stance on mushing whatsoever. But Peter
it says, don't don't use a dog as a draft animal,
even for your own recreation. Um. But if you'll notice,
the one common thread is that all these groups are
opposed to the idea it a rod itself. They are
saying like, even if you have vets on at every checkpoint,
(50:06):
apparently the mushers can um overrule the vets ruling. If
a vets like this dog needs to come out, the
musher can be like, get lost and the vet doesn't
have any recourse. Um, And that's totally well within the rules.
But even if you do have vets looking after them,
and even if Peter has successfully promoted change and the
(50:26):
idea ROD is credited for really facing up to a
lot of the problems that the dogs face and dealing
with them and having like a very low tolerance for
animal cruelty, especially um, the very fact that you're hooking
up animals too sled and driving them miles over eight
days is in and of itself, to a lot of critics,
(50:49):
inhumane for the entertainment of people. Even take that away
for whatever reason. It's it's inhumane, like, well take it away.
But it's not like the old days where you needed
to deliver the mail's serums. I mean, it's purely for
entertainment at this point. And I know it's tradition, and
people that are into this are gonna say, like, you
know that you could do anything these days. Definitely, this
(51:13):
is a proud old tradition, like just stay We've moved
to Alaska for a reason. Stay out of my business. Um.
And they definitely do take that stance for sure. But
that's not to say that mushers are cruel awful people.
By all accounts, most of them are very good to
their animals because they want them to perform well. Uh
they are like family to them in most cases. But
(51:36):
you still hear about these uh terrible things that happen
uh in the in the training. And it's not just
the race itself, it's the training, it's the pens. They'll
they'll they still call animals. There's one guy named Frank Winkler.
Two times I did a ride racer. He was charged
with fourteen counts of cruelty two animals. When UH animal
(51:58):
control officer are found a craze of dead and dying
puppies in his truck. He said he couldn't afford to
take him to the vet. So they'll call the dogs
like if you have a deformity, if you're just not
good enough, they will still kill that's what calling means.
Kill the puppies. And they don't call them by injecting
them with um, you know, sodium pentethal or some gassing them.
(52:20):
A lot of them, A lot of kennels, even like
professional kennels UM will shoot them. And the I did
a rod committee. That's that's within their rules. Like you
can shoot a dog to cull it. Colling is fine,
and how you call it um is okay. Apparently beating
a dog to death is not really acceptable. But that's
what Frank Winkler did. But for he did he shot
(52:43):
some and then I guess he ran out of bullets
and started using an axe handle and he was an
I did rod racer um. And that's a problem with
the kennels that there are a lot of kennels out
there that don't treat their dogs very well. They don't
feed them enough, they treat them fairly and humanely, and
just the very fact that they cold dogs that aren't
good enough is is um reprehensible to a lot of people. Yeah,
(53:05):
me included at the u S UH. And I want
to say, and me too, like I think this is
there's a there's a there's a part of me that
I'm like, this is not my thing that's up in Alaska.
But dogs belong to humanity. Well, yeah, it's like when
we did the bullfighting thing, like you can take your
tradition and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. And again,
(53:28):
culling isn't something that all breeders do, all kennels do. Uh.
Many of the dogs now that aren't capable or adopted
out to loving families, which is great, but culling is
still a part of the culture and some kennels, uh
the u S crab Lunic Kennel and aspin Colorado UH
say that as many as thirty five dogs have been
killed annually by gunshot to the head. And the manager said,
(53:51):
you know, culling dates back hundreds of years. It's nothing new.
It's part of the circle of life for this dog
sled dog. The circle of life, the nine millimeter of
the brain is these so um, yeah, wow, it's part
of the circle of life. Huh, that's what are you said?
And so Chuck. A lot of this stuff is reserved
(54:11):
for the I did a rod specifically, and the kennels
that supply dogs for the idea rod. But just having
a sled dog in and of itself is not necessarily
a bad thing, or even using a dog for a
sled dog is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't
think I take a heart line as PA. Maybe like
if you want to recreationally much Uh, there is a long,
(54:32):
great history of it. I have no problem with it
because these dogs do love to run. Uh, they love
to pull, and that's their job. But I just can't
get behind endurance racing if these dogs are being injured
or if they die from it. It's just my opinion.
I know a lot of people disagree. We don't put
opinions in here much, but one argument I don't want
to hear is that we should shut down all endurance
(54:52):
racing for humans in because humans can get injured and die.
The key difference here is humans have free will and
they elect to do so. Uh big difference between animals
and humans that it's just not a comparison I think
you should make. Okay, Well, if you want to know
more in the meantime about the I Did Rod, you
can go watch it. You can go to I Did
a Rod dot com. I believe in track the Racers
(55:13):
um and you can also read how the I did
Rod works on how stuff works by typing those words
in the search part how stuff works dot com and
uh say said search part, it's time for listener now,
Hey guys, I'm a registered dietitian. I realized I spent
a lot of my day tech talking about the three
things in my email title, which was poop. Listen to
(55:33):
the Poop podcast on the way to work today and
really enjoyed it. As someone who regularly discusses poop and digestion,
it's great to hear it on a podcast. Also, I
think you guys should do a breastfeeding episode. Breastfeeding is
super fascinating. Uh so, thanks for being great in car entertainment.
I came across this gem of a conversation a few
years back because, uh, you guys were asking for different
names for taking a poop, and she said someone had
(55:56):
written name your poop after a movie on a bathroom wall,
And of course a plenty list ensued. And here are
some of my favorites. The Great Escape and by the way,
we heard from a lot of people with great names.
Children of the Corn, The Exorcist, Operation Dumbo, Drop e
(56:17):
t the Extraterrestrian, I don't get held, I don't. I
didn't get the Exors, Rosemary's Baby not bad, the hurt Locker,
mud Gross, Apocalypse now not bad, easy writer, and there
will be blood gross so gross. So the first part
(56:42):
there's actually two emails. The first part was from Sarah uh,
and then the boop movies was from read Sarah. I
don't want you to be associated with that. What was Sara?
He was the one that said that that gress feeding
would be good. And she's a dietitian and she talks
a lot about poop. So we should do a breast
feeding one again if it canna be a hornet's nest.
(57:04):
But we could do it. Sure, we just have to
research it because there's no article on how stuff works.
They think about it. It's worthwhile. Okay, sounds good, uh,
But if you want to get in touch with us
in the meantime. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
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us an email to Stuff Podcast that how Stuff Works
(57:26):
dot com and it's always joined us out at home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff Works dot com.
This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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our offer code stuff at check out and get ten
percent off square Space. Build it beautiful. You smell that, Josh,
that's the smell of the Pacific Northwest. It's a smell
of spring. Oh yeah, that that's where I was headed. Okay,
(00:20):
So we are launching our Spring has Sprung tour and
uh other dates tb D. But we know we are
starting in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, like I said, which
is what smells like pachuli and liberalism and uh pine
where we go in Seattle in Portland. Right on Friday,
April eight, We're gonna be in Seattle at the Neptune,
(00:41):
which we were at last time. It was a great venue,
of great venue. The next day we're going to be
in Portland at Revolution Hall, new venue for us, new
venue for us, and we are going back there because
two reasons you both treated us so well last time.
And we have a very special podcast Taylor made for
your necabou it. That's right, so come see us. You
(01:01):
can get tickets on s y s K live dot com,
our website powered by squarespace. That's right, and uh, we'll
see you guys April eighth and ninth. Come on out,
Pacific Northwest. Welcome to you Stuff you should know from
house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:27):
I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
Jerry over there. And there's some delicious ritz crackers of
peanut butter dipped in white chocolate, which means this is
stuff you should know. Yummy cookies. Yes, but we're not
gonna say who sent them just yet because that will
fall under the administrative which, by the way, while we're
(01:48):
mentioning it, thanks again to Mark Henry. We're pretty sure
we thanked for the awesome steel work that we got
at the Pittsburgh showy steel and barnwork right exactly. I
thought we'd thanked him it. If we didn't, I want
to make sure we did for sure, because it hangs
right here above our heads proudly. It looms intimidating lee
over our heads. Are you intimidated by it? Now? I'm
(02:11):
a little under the weather, though, can you tell? I can? Yeah,
mostly because you said so. But now that now that
I'm listening for it, I can hear it sort of that.
It's like you gotta stick a butter and each Nazia.
Oh man, I wish do you you can do that?
How are you? I'm doing okay, I'm not under the weather. Um.
I am nice warm here in Atlanta. It's like seventy
(02:34):
degrees outside here and like March one. Um. Kind of well,
I want to say the opposite, but not necessarily these
days things to climate change. Um in Alaska, Leo DiCaprio,
where there, I thought that was a great speech, was fantastic,
nailed it. Thin guy should be an actor. Uh in
(02:56):
Alaska where they're about to do the Ida or they're
about to run it. As a matter back, when this
comes out, it will have started a couple of days before, right,
so we'll be like right smack dab in the middle
of what's called the last great race on Earth, the
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, also known as just the
Iddarad or the Iddarade trail Sled dog Race. Did I
(03:18):
say dog sled? No, you said it, but you just
put the emphasist on the weird words or the I
did rode trail sled dog race exactly. We could do
this several more times we could. So let's get into this.
I'm gonna we're probably both gonna say poopy things about
(03:39):
dog racing, aren't we Probably. Yeah, I'm just waiting for
people in Alaska to be mad at me. It's gonna
be years before they get their hands on this episode. Yeah,
probably so, because you have to fly it out, you
drop it in from town to town, and everybody has
to get their turn listening to it. Yeah. Thing I
(04:00):
learned about people from Alaska is the reason they live
in Alaska is because they don't like being told what
to do by anybody. No, they don't. They like getting
pushed around. No, so they moved to Alaska, where you
can do as you please. So yeah, we'll see where
this one goes. So the idea Rode, for those of
you who don't know, is actually a a grueling endurance
(04:21):
race across some of the coldest parts of the planet miles.
That's a long way. And it's not like people are
running or snowshoeing or hang gliding. They are on a
little sled on skis. You could also call it a
mini sligh if you wanted to. And this these mini
(04:44):
slaves are pulled by teams of dogs. And that's the race.
It's a dog sled race, that's right. Dog sled race
held every year since nineteen seventy three. And uh, there's
no like set a number of participants that kind of
areas from year to year, depending on how many people
want to take part. And uh, like you said, it's
(05:05):
rough terrain, it's cold, brutal conditions could be anywhere from
it could go down to fifty below zero. That's insane,
with harsh winds and blinding snow. Snowblinds. Is that what
it's called. That's what azz he called it. Yeah, do
you remember the song snowblind? Yeah? I think so great black.
(05:27):
I don't think he was talking about snow though, probably not,
you know what I mean? Oh, is he talking about cocaine?
I think he may have been. I never thought about that, so, uh, Chuck,
you said like up to fifty below I saw sixty
below fahrenheight. Sixty below zero fahret heeight, that's cold. But
I also kept running across people saying like negative forty
(05:48):
degrees fahrenheight. And I remember we said that once when
we were talking about seam o Hia, the Finnish sniper.
It was like the baddest dude ever, the White Ghosters
something something like that, the White Death, White Death. Yeah,
I think that was it. Man, that guy, it's crazy anyway. Um,
and we mentioned that he was out sniping people in
(06:10):
in temperatures as cold as negative forty degrees fahrenheight, And
ever since then people wrote in and said, dude, negative
forty degrees is the same, and Celsius and fahrenheight it's
where they converge. And ever since then, I've always noticed
there's very few people who realize that, Yeah, well I
forgot negative forty degrees. You don't have to say fahrenheher
(06:31):
or celsius is amazing. The magic temperatures are so cold,
none gives a crap, right exactly. Uh So the route
for the iditarod Um, there are a couple of different
routes depending on what year it is. Uh, this would
be an even year, so that means they're going to
follow the northern route last year, and every odd year
(06:51):
they have a southern route. And uh they are basically
the same route except for three hundred miles in the
middle where it's different. Yeah, between a fear and Uncle elite,
I believe I think so, um, and it either shoots
up or dips down depending but other than that, it's
(07:12):
the same exact route. Yeah, there are twenty six checkpoints
along the way on the northern route and then twenty
seven on the southern route because you need just that
one extra by the southern route. I think, didn't it
say the southern rount is a little harder? Uh? Yeah,
I think the general thought is in northern trail is
a little easier, but like I think there's a difference
in terrain. Typically that makes sense, and you would think, Okay,
(07:35):
this is a thousand mile plus trek across snow in
negative fifties sixty degree fahrenheight weather. Um, it's gonna take forever, right,
And as a matter of fact, the first one in
nineteen seventy three did take I think the last place
finisher more than thirty days to complete the race. Nowadays
(07:56):
they're doing these things in like eight and change. Yeah,
the record the first I did a ROD was like
twenty days and change for the winner for the winner,
and now the record is a guy named John Baker
In finished it. So that would be a southern route
even even more difficult, uh, In eight days eighteen hours,
forty six minutes and thirty nine seconds. I saw more
(08:17):
recently a guy named Dallas Cev who's part of like
An I did a rod Family UM in two thousand
and fourteen. He broke that record, but a few hours,
eight days, thirteen hours, four minutes in nineteen seconds. I
thought the baker was a guy No and baker, I
guess top all another guy named Martin Bousser, who um
he uh, he had the record for a little while.
(08:37):
But yeah, it went from like what did you say,
twenty days for the winner in nineteen seventy three and
now it's like just over a week, and within that
week is a forced twenty four hour furlough, So technically
they might be able to do it in a week
if they really tried. Yeah, twenty four hours plus two
eight hour breaks. So yeah, I bet if it was
(09:01):
up to the mushers, they would press on yes, because
aside from those enforced breaks, they do typically press on UM.
They'll stop every once in a while, like feed the
dogs or something like that, but for the most part
they're not sleeping. They're staying awake and they're just pushing forward,
so they get sleep deprivation. They start to hallucinate. Um.
(09:21):
I read this really great New Yorker article called the
White Wall, where, um, the light from your head lamp
because you're traveling at night. Sure most of the time, Um,
the light from your head lamp is reflecting off of
the fur around your parka, and it creates this kind
of white screen in your field of vision, and it's
like right for hallucinations. She just started to go a
(09:42):
little batty. Yeah, for sure, I saw where this one
lady who uh was a musher said that she slept
while she was Oh yeah, that's what she said. She
just taught herself to kind of hang on and off,
or maybe she just thought she was sleeping. Yeah, that's possible.
And you know, it's freaking out on the snowblind, so
(10:05):
we should mention mush. Apparently no one says mush anymore.
Oh as far as like the lingo. Yeah, now they
say like hiker, all right, or let's go, But mush
originally meant like start going. Yeah, it's a fridge from
Marcia or marsh, yes, marsh and uh yeah, they still
call them mushers. It's funny name. But apparently the mushers
(10:27):
don't use the word mush when they're as far as
like their command exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. So you
want to talk about the history of this sport, this
endurance sport, because the there's really no way around it.
The dogs are like peak before, they're like Lebron James,
of of of dogs, all of them. But let's talk
(10:50):
about the history of sled dogs, about the kind of
dogs that are used for sled dogs. Like most people,
including me, assume that if you were um riding around
the snow on a sled being pulled by dogs, you're
probably being pulled by Siberian huskies or Alaska mala mutes
or maybe a samoyad. Yes, perhaps, Thank you for being
(11:13):
the one to say it out loud. It's not the
easiest one just looking at it to pronounce. Would you say?
Some woyd Samoyd. I watched the dog Show the other day.
That's why I love that they had who won? Uh
you know? I'd actually well, that's how old I am.
I fell asleep before the best in show. Okay, that's
(11:36):
all right. Yeah, this very fun as long as you
enjoyed yourself watching it. I want to go one year. Yeah,
that'd be cool. All that it is crazy, crazy partying.
No I think it'd probably be a lot of fun
to go see and cheer for dogs, although I'm against
dog breeding in general, so I probably shouldn't even go. Um,
(11:57):
but the the some what is you say, the samoiede
and the Alaskan malamute and the Siberian husky. They are
all a k C registered breeds. They're recognized by the
American Kennel Club, and they used to pull sleds, especially
Siberian Huskies. There's a guy named um Leonard uh oh man.
(12:19):
I can't remember his name, Cippola, I believe it's what
his name was, and he was the guy who first
started racing Siberian Huskies in Alaska on sleds. But if
you go to Alaska today, you're going to find something
called an Alaskan husky is typically the kind of dog
that you're gonna encounter as a sled dog. And this
is like a mixed breed. It's a mutt breed UM
and they have been bred to just basically be mentally tough,
(12:44):
physically sturdy, UM not too big but also not too small.
The thick coat and um yes, and uh, not just quickness,
but a strong inbred desire to run and pull stuff
while they're running. Yeah, I saw this. One guy called it. Uh,
(13:04):
it's like they have a wanderlust, like there there's always
some place else they'd rather be, Like they want to
go go go over there, which is why. Um, if
it's when you're taking a break or something with your
dogs on the iditar rod, you have to chain them
down whereas they're like see you. And they also microchip
them as well. I had a friend who had a
(13:26):
husky and um, they are not easy. And this husky
would get out and see you later. Yeah, for like
two days. Yeah, and he always came back, but he
came back wearing like a Hawaiian shure. Yeah. That would
freak if my dog got out, because my dogs are
big dummies. They wouldn't like that, wouldn't know how to
come back. Was this a pretty smart dog? Yeah? I
think that's the Alaska husky is pretty smart generally, So
(13:48):
it was an Alaska husky, I think so. Yeah. So
Alaska huskies are descended, um more from the dogs called
Inuit dogs and Eskimo dogs, and they are basically in
didigenous dogs to Alaska. They came over with the first
humans who crossed the Bearing Land bridge, right, the dogs
pulled them across that bridge, probably, oh they did. So.
(14:11):
I saw that they didn't hook dogs up the sleds
until like the them this past millennia or the one
we're in now that was like a D eight hundred
or maybe twelve hundred when they were using sleds. That's
what I saw, um, but I also saw that it
goes back to time immemorial. Who knows. What I did
(14:32):
see though, is that these dogs, these Inuit dogs and
the Eskimo dogs were um definitely hauling stuff like whale
carcasses are huge parts of whale carcasses to be butchered
back in town. Um, they were hunting dogs, their companions,
they were protector dogs. They were just total um butt
(14:53):
kicking animals that could stand temperatures well into the negative
twenties or aties or forties degree parentheights. Because that double coat, yes,
so the outer coade I think deflects the snow and
then they have the inner coat that has waterproof and
insulates them. So when you see those dogs laying out
(15:13):
in the snow, uh, they're not cold, right, you know,
don't think, oh poor dog laying in the snow. I
mean there can be problems, as we talked about with
the Iddarod when that one dog was buried. Um, they
can also get frost bit. They can get frostbite though
depending But yeah, for the most part, which I don't understand. Man,
that's crazy. I was like, man, these checkpoints, they have
(15:35):
like tents at the checkpoints. How how big are the tents?
I mean, what if more than one team has to
put their dogs in the tents? And I was like,
they're not in the tent. No, they sleep, they put down,
they put down. Hey, they might have a bale of
hay that the musher has, um and the dogs sleep
on the hay in the snow and they cover their
nose with their tails they do, which is adorable. And
(15:55):
at kennels for these dogs, some of them they'll have
like plastic barrels cut in half with a little hole
for the dog to get in and out of when
weather is really bad. But for the most part, yeah,
especially if it's not snowing or windy. Uh, a Inuit
dog or Alaska husky can just sleep outside on the
snow exactly. They used to deliver the mail in Alaska
(16:18):
in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds. That
was exclusively how the mail was delivered until the airplane
became the primary mode of mail delivery. Uh. And the
last mail dog in Alaska retired in nineteen sixty three,
so not too long ago. Pretty impressive, Yeah, right before hippies. Yeah,
(16:40):
the dog didn't didn't live to see hippies. The police
used them uh in the in the gold rush of
the late eighteen hundreds, and of course Alaska aside. They
have long been used in Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Yeah.
There was actually a very famous antarctic expedition in Japan
(17:01):
where I think in the fifties. Yeah. Uh, an antarctic
expedition had to be abandoned and the Japanese researchers had
to be evact by helicopter and they were like sorry, dogs,
well somebody will be back in a few days. We're
gonna change you up here. Here's some food, good luck,
(17:22):
fight over it. A year later, a research team made
it back to that outpost and they found two of
the dogs were still alive, uh, Taro and Jero, and
they were brothers, which makes it even more awesome, and
they became national heroes back in Japan. Um, And I
was like, well, yeah, of course they ate the other dogs.
(17:45):
I've read an article that said that there were no
signs of cannibalism, that they just like like hunted penguins
and seals and stuff like that and managed to survive.
Was it that the basis of the Paul Walker Walker
movie Paul Walker, The Fast and the Furious, same guy, Uh, no,
longer with us too? No? That car wreck? Yeah? Was
(18:07):
he a passenger? He was the passenger in that car wreck,
wasn't he? I think he drove. He did have a passenger.
What was it called eight below right? Yeah, which is
he's not Japanese. No, but he's he It was supposedly him.
I think it must have been based on that or something.
I haven't seen the movie. I think they thought an
updated version would fair better. They're like, who does everyone
(18:27):
like Paul Walker? Exactly? They were used as war dogs
in World War One and World War Two, hauling equipment,
search and rescue. Helps set up the Alaska telegraph line
around World War One. Um, and they also almost invaded
Norway from uh the eastern coast of Canada. Yeah. Yeah.
(18:49):
They were attached to like the fifteenth Mountaineering regiment of
the United States Army. I think it would have been
army for sure. And um, we didn't invade Norway, but
have we These dogs would have been there with us yea.
And by us, I mean specifically you and me, Chuck,
because we were. Uh so you said that they are
(19:09):
bred for there not only endurance, but for their for
their speed. And they actually have their feet have adapted
to take on this train because a good sletter is
uh is that a sletter? Sure? Alright? Good letters has
wide flat feet. But they also have toes that are
(19:30):
dense and together. You don't alto explayed toes because stuff
can get in between them. So basically they have like
they they have feet like hammers. It sounds like hammer
toes basically, but hammer feet. Yeah. And the gender doesn't matter.
Uh Lady, little lady dogs and little boy dogs are
just as good. Uh So gender isn't a big deal. Um.
(19:53):
They're also big at trail breaking, right, So like, if
you want to go out and see if the ice
is thicken up to cross, take a team of sled dogs.
And they actually do this in Denali National Park. Yeah,
and they do it ahead of the Iditarod. They send
out teams to break the trails and make sure it's
as safe as it can be. And those trails, chuck
(20:14):
were used for a very long time and still were,
but then they started in like the six sixties, say
maybe early seventies, to be blazed more by by snowmobiles.
And this guy named Joe Ruddington Sr. Was really sad
to see the dog sled, the traditional um sled, being
(20:35):
replaced by the snowmobile man made machines. And he said,
you know what, we need to preserve this heritage. I'm
going to start a race in the in the fashion
of some of these old ones. There was this all
Alaska Sweepsteaks that was much shorter. But like in the
ninet hundreds, people were using sled dogs a lot and
actually using them, but then they fell out of fashion.
(20:55):
So this guy, Joe Ruddington Sr. Tried to preserve it
by starting this race. Yeah the Dorothy Page or they
together or were they just uh they were they were
kindred spirits. Okay, gotcha. So the first one they organized
was a fifty mile race, right yeah, and like the
sixties and not like the mile journey that has grown
into today. They really stepped it up yeah, and the sprints,
(21:18):
they actually have sprint races. They have all different races.
A sprint is a thirty mile sprint, like just go
flat out for thirty miles. Thirty miles. That's insane, It
is so um there's this very there's this widely um
held misconception that I did a rod was created to
commemorate this, um this very famous run that happened in right, Yeah,
(21:44):
the dip theory outbreak. They ran out of well, they
needed to get medicine and they used dogs to get
medicine to the farthest reaches of Alaska. And like Gnome,
I think there's about to be a dip theory outbreak.
So that has nothing to do with it, because that
is all over the internet, including on the IDDA out side. No,
if you look at the Idea out side, it says
specifically what Joe Reddington's aim was. Yeah, um no, I
(22:08):
know I saw that everywhere, including on our own How
Stuff Works articles that people believe that they meant to
con rememorate it. And yes, this this incredibly courageous emergency
rescue operation of bringing vaccine um well at least antiets,
and I think it is what it was to the
children of Nome before this outbreak killed them all. Um,
(22:29):
it captured the world's imagination. UM, and it did follow
the same route half of it, but the first half
was delivered by train and UM, the Idda trail was
starting to fall out of use by the time Joe
Reddington and Dorothea Page came along and wanted to preserve it.
So it's more coincidence than anything that they didn't They
(22:52):
didn't intentionally create the idea road to commemorate the dip
theory run from Well, if you go to New York
Central Park around sixty s it um on the east side,
you can see a statue of Balto, the dog who
was the lead dog on that serum run. So they said,
we're gonna commemorate this in New York, which I don't
(23:12):
get it londs like it would be in Alaska. Well,
the reason why they did it there was because, um,
like the whole country was paying attention, much of the
world was paying attention to this this little tiny this
little tiny town up in Alaska was in real trouble.
And this doctor put all these telegraphs out like asking
for somebody to bring them something. And the closest stuff
(23:34):
was in Anchorage, and since this trek took like five days,
people were covering it for the for the newspapers, and
people were reading about it all over the country. They
got so jazzed up that New York was like, we're
gonna wreck the Statue of Balto. But that didn't explain
why New York they just got that excited. Yeah, that's
the reason. That's exactly why. Uh So in the early
(23:57):
nineteen nineties. Well, let's let's take a break, actually, and
then we'll talk about the nineties. Yea, So in the
(24:20):
early nineties, as I was saying, before they started there,
there's a ceremonial kickoff they do. Now, uh that's not
a part of the actual race, so people can come
out and cheer them on. Yeah, so they have a
big party and people line the streets and they get
all the Apparently it's a crazy scene because you know,
hundreds and hundreds of dogs, and these dogs, I will say,
(24:43):
I mean, we'll get to the the downside, which is
pretty grotesque if you ask me. But these dogs want
to work, and they want to they want to pull
the sled. Um, I don't know if they want to
pull a eleven hundred miles. But they are sled dogs.
And so when you get these highly energetic uh, well,
they're all kinds of breeds, but mostly the Alaska husky
(25:05):
is what they prefer. Uh, mushers prefer. Um. It's a
crazy scene because they're not like they're they're not your
average lapdog. They're excited and they howl. They have very
shrill howls. A lot of them do, yeah, unless they
had their voice box removed by their musher, which is
the thing it can be. Um. So they kick off
(25:27):
an Anchorage and the reason why it's just a ceremonial
kickoffs because there's usually not enough snow these days in
Anchorage again climate change. So they used to go up
to Vascilla or was Silla? I don't know how they
pronounce it up there? Is it was Silla. Yeah, that's
Sarah Palins, I know, I don't remember back then. Um
(25:48):
and uh, then they stopped getting enough reliable snow there,
so they had to move it up even further to
Willow Willow Willow Vilva, phil of Um is two and
a half hours north of Anchorage. They always have snow there,
that's their motto, right, So they have the ceremonial parade
of the dogs the day before, and then the next
day is when they start, and like the race officially starts. Yeah,
(26:12):
and it costs a lot of money to uh to
put on the race and and it's not cheap to
be a musher with a sled team. I mean you
can put as much as like twenty grand into your
sled team. Uh and the training and you know, it
takes a long time. So some of these mushers have
corporate sponsors. Uh you can make money to like, um,
owning a kennel and leasing dogs out to other I
(26:34):
did aod contestants. Yeah, um, yeah, but yeah, I think
corporate sponsorships definitely helped quite a bit. Well. A lot
of corporations have stepped away from it though in recent
years as far as sponsoring the race, um, because of
all the controversy surrounding it, which we will still get to. Uh,
you gotta be eighteen. You can't just be some uh
(26:55):
dumb fourteen year old or even a seventeen year old,
not even seventeen and a half. You gotta be eight
team and you have to have completed uh some other
qualifying races and place. I mean, we can get specific
if you want uh a Yukon Quest International Sled Dog
Race or two approved races, and you have to have
at least five miles under your belt on those races
(27:17):
and have finished in the top or it says here
mind bending lee. Another way to qualify for an idd
A rod race is to have been in a previous
I did a rod race, which I guess. Yeah, I
don't think that. What's you. I guess once you're in
your first one, then you're qualified. But are you sure?
It wasn't like if you've won, then you get like
(27:38):
a lifetime No. I don't think exemption. That's what golfers do,
is right, well, some of them, some of the p
g A events. If you win that event, then you're
automatically and for the rest of your life. Maybe not
the rest of your life, but I think for like
the next five years or it depends on the Then
you get automatically qualified. That makes sense, all right, So
what's uh? What's what does a sled team look like?
(28:01):
They look pretty good. You got your musher, that's the
guy standing on back telling the dogs what to do. Yes,
that's right, um, I mean the gender neutral guy. Um.
And then you have a team of dogs and depending
on what you're doing UM with the idea in particular,
you have to start I think with sixteen dogs, right,
(28:22):
and you have to finish with twelve. No, twelve to sixteen,
and they have to finish with ten. So you can
have up to six dogs die along the way and
not get disqualified from the idea. Rod Technically, um and
in the lead are the very appropriate named lead dogs.
These are your smartest, fastest dogs. I was reading about
(28:45):
these dogs. These dogs are amazing dogs, so smart that
they will even disobey their owner if they're like, dude,
that's a cliff. Don't tell me too much. I know
you can't see because you're snow blind in the Aussie fashion,
So just leave it to me to ignore your a
man and steer us to the left. And so when
that lead dog starts to go, the dogs immediately behind them,
the point dogs or the what are they called the
(29:09):
swing dogs? They also are called point too. I think
they're the ones who actually get the rest of the
team to turn with them. Yeah, and uh, they call
them swings because you know you have to. You can't
cut it short. You gotta swing wide around obstacles and
These dogs are smart enough to know to do that.
So you've got those are the first four dogs you have.
Are the lead dogs and the swing or point dogs
(29:30):
behind them. You're gonna have a couple of pairs of
what are called team dogs. These dogs are just really
good at pulling, working well with others. Yeah, they're like
the role player on the NBA bench. Yeah, they're the
solid basketball players, the Draymond Greens. But sure, but they're
not going to be starting an All Star game. No,
(29:50):
but they they they may have enough spunking spirit. You
get the rest of the team going, um, yeah, the
Draymond Greens. And then at the back, right in front
of the sled are the wheels, the wheelers. Yes, and
they are the strongest of the bunch, supposedly, And uh,
those are the dogs. But the dogs are attached to
(30:13):
the sled or else you're in big trouble. You have
a bunch of really fast dogs running together and a
mushard who's left behind. How funny would that be? It
would be funny to everybody else, but the mush rights
and um, the sled connects to the dogs through the
main line or the toe line right or the gang line.
I think it's the other name for it. And this
(30:33):
is basically just a line that goes from the sled
all the way up to the lead dogs, and all
the dogs are connected to this thing. That's right. Then
the dogs are connect to the lead line and they
pull on that toe line via tug lines that are
connected to their harnesses. That's right. Uh. And the dog
is wearing a color and a harness. Um, they don't. Actually,
(30:55):
it's not like they don't have reins. Like a horse,
They go on command. Um. I have seen like a whip.
They stopped us whips, but they used to fairly recently,
got you. Yeah, they go mushus no mush no more
mush no more whips. Things are changing big time as
(31:15):
a matter of fact. Um. And then you have the
So the dog's collars can is connected by a collar line,
I think right. So, Uh, you have to condition these dogs.
You know, they don't come out of the uh the
womb ready to run a thousand miles. They want to. Yeah,
they've got some genetics going on for sure, but absolutely
(31:35):
takes some shaping as well. But you have to condition
them over time, uh, from the time they're little pups
to start them out wearing the collar and the harness
to get used to it. To pulling little light things
around the house that's adorable, yeah, um. To building up
their endurance in their in their strength over time, just
like you know any endurance race, if you're a marathon
(31:57):
or the same deal. You don't go out and run
twenty six miles. And you also have to be um.
You have to understand um verbal commands obscure ones too,
like hike not much, though no one says much to
a dog. Let's go all right? All those mean let's
(32:19):
let's go right. Yeah, I think that's how they say
it easy if you want to slow down and we
couldn't decide as a G I think it's g I
think I think it's gum. Or come haw to go
left or right? Haw is definitely haw uh straight on
(32:39):
and then whoa if you're gonna stop. It makes sense
like with a horse, and imagine straight on means keep
on going. They also definitely need to learn to work together,
which is not necessarily in every breed of dogs makeup.
You know, dogs have alpha dogs and their pack dogs,
and you have a lead dog that that lead dog
(33:00):
and fulfill that role. But you also want dogs that
can that aren't like constantly jockeying for position, that they
know their place and they're willing to work together with
the other dogs. Temperaments a big deal for sure. And
then um, you also when you're running the Iditara and
you're putting a sled team together, you out you want
to pick dogs of similar build, similar gait and speed.
(33:22):
You want them to basically move as one. And so
a lot of the selection and your dogs that you
put together for a team is going to have a
huge impact on the like how they pay well together
but not and not just temperamentally but physically and in
the way that they move as well. Yeah, and the dogs, uh,
they can be big um, But generally I think for
(33:44):
the endurance races, you want a dog this between like
forty and sixty pounds and how old are they Well, um,
if you want to be a sled dog, you're probably
at least two. But you would think you know, like
if you look at thoroughbred horse racing, those horses are
retired by like age three, I think maybe four. These
dogs will pull sleds and compete in like races up
(34:09):
until age ten. Yeah, not bad. And again at the
Nali National Park. They get retired at age nine. Uh.
They're eating a lot. Uh. They need to eat around
ten thousand calories a day while they're doing these races. Uh.
That's about two thousand pounds of food per team and
it's mostly just meat. But they have this stuff. It's
(34:29):
sort of like how can the Appalachian Trail? They have
it flown ahead and dropped off at all these checkpoints,
so the food in your bourbon is waiting there when
you get there. There was a guy um Man what
was his name, Macki Lance Mackie. He was like the
number one I did a rod racer for several years
and um, he was not well liked among all I
(34:52):
did a rod racers because he used to just do
things like smoke pot like while he was just riding
along on the I did or trail. I saw the
drugs and alcohol was the thing with Musher's. I don't
know if that's how widespread it is, but well, it's
like a marijuana is a banned substance now even apparently
they're talking about legalizing it in Alaska and the I
(35:13):
did a rude committee is like not still can't smoke pot?
Lance Mackie, we're looking at you. Um. But apparently according
to this New Yorker article, great New Yorker article, the
White Wall check it out. ESPN has a really good
one too. Um. They said that he quit and did
the did the race straight and still one once I think,
and then smoke tons of pot right afterwards to celebrate. Yeah. Um.
(35:35):
But the along this trail, um, you were saying that
that the dogs eat mostly meat. They eat different types
of meat. They also eat like, um, nutritional supplements. And
in the White Wall the article they describe what Dallas
stevis feeding his dogs at One Stop, and he's it's
like a four course meal. He starts with a broth
(35:57):
um with kibble and some nutritional supplements, and then they
eat some fish steaks, you know, they have some beef
and when they finish it all off with chicken skin
like all fat. That sounds delicious. Yeah, And the dogs
are eating like ten to fourteen thousand calories a day,
which is like ten times the cloric intake of an
active dog of about the same size, ten times just
(36:20):
in a day. Yeah, because well they're they're running like
over a hundred miles a day. It's crazy. Uh, they're
wearing little doggy booties now, um, because it's very rough
on their feet obviously running over this ice and snow
and rough terrain. Uh. And a team will go through
as many as two thousand pairs or this has two
(36:41):
thousand booties. Maybe a thousand pairs. Yeah, well no, yeah,
a thousand pairs. Would it be a pair before? Yeah,
a dog pair of before? So five hundred dog pair.
We just created a new thing. It's like a Baker's dozen.
So two thousand booties we'll go through. Um, but they're
(37:02):
still going to get their feet beat up, their paws
beat up pretty bad. Well yeah, because dogs perspire by
panting and on the bottoms of their feet, So you
can't just wear um booties all the time. So that
one of the mushers things that they really have to
be paying attention to is a good time to give
the dogs feet to rest without the booties, to let
them basically perspire so they don't overheat. Yeah, And I
(37:24):
get the feeling that if they're really hauling and they
see that they've lost a few booties, they're not like, oh,
let me stop and put a fresh booty. You know,
They're they're mushing forward so Chuck, let's take a break, um,
and uh, we'll come back and talk about some other stuff.
(37:59):
All right, we've talked about dogs, We've talked a little
bit about mushers. But one thing that makes a good
musher is granted, they are standing. They're not running. Well,
sometimes they're running along, but they're basically they're definitely standing.
But it's tough. It's not like I get the feeling.
It's like if you've ever been snow skiing or water skiing,
(38:22):
it's hard on your legs. It's not like, oh, I'm
just standing here or taking a joy ride. Ye have
over over bumpy terrain um for hours and hours and
hours basically for eight days. It's gonna be strong and
have a lot of stamin in your own self. You
also have to put up with again you have to
be yeah, mentally tough. You have to put up with
(38:42):
the hallucinations and um not make really bad decisions while
you're on the trail and it's night and you haven't slept. Um.
And uh, you also need to pack. Well, yeah, you
want to bring everything. It's sort of like backpacking everything
you need but as light as you can make it.
And you there's actually stuff you have to bring just
(39:06):
to survive. You gotta have a sleeping bag, sleeping bag
and axe, snowshoes, a little cooking pot and fuel so
you can boil water. Sure, um, and then you also, um,
most of them carry a gun. The Dallas CV guy
said that he carries a three fifty seven with him
and he actually shot a moose with it that was
charging him and his dogs. And no, because this is
(39:30):
his long time rival, the the young upstart, the clean Liver,
whose father Straight Edge U was also I Did a
Rod winner from two thirteen. I think it very much
seems like a family thing. I saw a lot of
people with the same last names. Um. And then the
other big essential gear is the sled itself, which there's
(39:52):
not like. You don't go to the official I Did
a Rod sled store and buy your sled and go, okay,
I'm ready. You you constructed yourself? Oh really, yeah, you
definitely can'. I'm sure there's sleds out there that you
can buy, but you can also build him yourself. The
I Did a Rod only requires that quote some type
of sled or toboggan must be drawn, right, so you
want that to be light as well. Um, probably about
(40:13):
a hundred pounds empty, more than twice that full. Yeah,
plus your own human body. Yeah, which you know, maybe
drop a few pounds before the race. And again, I'm
sorry to keep going to the same well, but the
Dallas TV cat, the reason we I keep mentioning him
is like he is really your hero. He's he's fine,
(40:34):
he's I don't know enough about him to know whether
he's my hero or not, but he is definitely reshaped
the um. I did a rod race um with some
of the stuff he's doing. One of the things he's
doing is it's making I did a rod racers like
more athletic um. Like if they're going up a hill,
he'll jump off of the runners and run behind the
(40:56):
sled rather than just get a ride with the dogs,
which of course increases your time, but it's also easier
on the dogs. It's just you have to be not
a tub and you have to be able to run
up in clins for eight days when you need to.
You know, Yeah, that's it can't be fun. Running in
the snow is not fun, No, but it helps you
win and it's easier on your dogs, and if you win,
(41:19):
you're gonna get some dough. They split the money up. Um,
you can actually finish in last place and still get
some money. Um, but you're gonna get obviously, the grand
prize winner will win a nice fat purse in the
six figure range, a really nice purse, very nice. Uh.
(41:39):
Then there are other little prizes along the way, like
a field day elementary school. If you reach the halfway
the first much are muchure to go to to the
halfway point. Um, in odd number of years it would
be I did a right itself and then in cripple Uh,
in the even number of years, you're gonna get yourself
the g C. I. Dorothy pay Age Halfway Award and
(42:02):
three thousand dollars in gold nuggets gold nuggets. That's pretty neat. Yeah.
Can you imagine every once a while they're like, we
didn't have the gold nuggets, but here's three thousand dollars.
I'd be like, I want my gold nuggets three thousand
dollars worth. Um, you bite into it, just check its authenticity,
and you call the guy who gives your dinner cookie. Yeah. Yeah,
(42:22):
that's the Alaska way. Uh. What else? The top lead
dog is gonna take home the Lolly Medley Memorial Golden
Harness Award. Of course everybody knows that. And then um
there's other towns where if you're the first one to
make it to say on Veek or Ruby, um, you'll
get a seven course meal and thirty five hundred one
dollar bills because it just seems like more not like
(42:45):
gold nuggets, but thirty five hundred one dollar bills is
pretty great. These are almost like joke gifts. Yeah. Well
Wells Fargo, which is five dollars in pennies you know,
slows you down. Um. Wells Fargo, which is uh one
of the bigger along with x On Mobile, the two
biggest corporate sponsors of the Idea Rode, offers them like
(43:07):
a the Red Lantern awards the last place finisher. Yeah,
I think that's from the Widows Lamp. At the finish line,
they have the Widows Lamp, which is a a lamp
that they leave burning until the last musher and team
has crossed. And that's from the old days, from they
would keep a kerosene lamp burning for people that were
(43:29):
still out there on the trails. Well Wells Fargo is
the old timey multinational bank. Look at their look at
their homespun logo with the stage coach, and it's pretty neat.
They're just Western cowboy bankers, right. And it's funny you
mentioned stage coach too, because you're like, wow, this is
(43:50):
crazy using dogs and pull sleds and you think what
you do with other stuff horses. This is using dogs
as draft animals. Absolutely, that's all totally fine. Uh. So
they have veterinarians on hand. Um, this article said around
thirty seven, So weird, and there's a little bit of
(44:11):
weirdness in this article, choke. But they do have veterinarians
on hand to to examin them during the race, uh,
before the race, to make sure they're all healthy. Um.
But dogs die. Dogs can die of over exertion. Um.
They can have trouble catching their breath. They can asphyxiate
on vomit um. They can fall through the ice is
(44:34):
a big one. As a matter of fact, falling through
the ice is not necessarily a death sentence, even when
it's negative forty degrees below. Sometimes I'll run right out
of that thing. Yeah, because they're Alaskan huskies right. Um.
But there's this very famous story from four there's an
I did a odd winner named Susan Butcher. And she
(44:55):
won multiple times. But her team in four UM was
let out of after falling through ice, but her two
lead dogs pulled the rest of the team out just
like one dog at a time until the whole team
had made it out of the ice water and continued
on kept going. Yeah. Um. And then the next year,
(45:18):
that same poor lead dog got kicked by a moose
and they didn't finish that year. I believe it had
to recuperate. He did had to recuperate for a year. UM.
I believe a hundred and forty four dogs have died
since the first race. UH. In the past few years
they haven't had any deaths, but generally one or two
dogs are going to die. Two thousand nine was a
(45:40):
bad year. UM. One of the worst and most recent years. UH.
There was like, I think six dogs that died that
year two thousand, I think eleven or twelve. There was
one dog that died, but it died terribly. UM. He
died from being asphyxiated by the snow after he was
left at a checkpoint by his musher in the hands
(46:02):
of like the local vets at the checkpoint, and they
tied him up and the weather got bad and no
one brought him in and he was a snow drift
just built over the dog. He couldn't go anywhere and
he suffocated in the snow. Um that that was a
big deal. Um. Yeah, Pete actually had to apologize. They
condemned the musher. They said that they just left this dog. No, no,
(46:26):
like they left him officially. No, no, But Peter didn't
say that. Petter said they just left this dog behind
it h and had they were had a lawsuit brought
against them, and they came out and apologized. Said, oh,
actually we know it wasn't on you. You left them
in the care of somebody else. And they said the
(46:46):
person said that the apology was weak. If you're gonna agitate,
even if it's four animal rights, you should agitate correctly. No, agreed.
Can I get your facts straight before you agitate, You know,
like there's enough, there's enough there that you can you
can get your facts straight and still agitate just as effectively. Yeah,
we're talking about dehydration, ulcers, hypothermia, heart problems, and let's
(47:08):
talk about those ulcers. Chuck. There was a study from
Oklahoma State University UM of a decent number of sled
dogs on the Iditarod trail that UM found a lot
of them had anemia because they had stomach ulcers and
they were bleeding slowly and developing anemia as a result.
And they got stomach ulcers from being fed aspirin and
(47:29):
anti inflammatory drugs like advil to keep them going to
keep their joints from hurting, and the the veterinary study
suggested that UM, the dogs be fed and acids to
combat the ulcers. So they're getting they're being driven a
thousand miles miles over eight days, they're given drugs to
(47:52):
keep their joints from hurting, they're getting ulcers from the drugs,
they're getting anemia from the ulcers, and this VET study
said that they should be given and acids. Yeah. One
of the vets, Uh Scott More, he was a volunteer
for the race a few years ago, said he saw
dogs with torn achilles tendons, dehydration, diarrhea, hypothermia, hyperthermia, inflammation
in the wrist, and soreness in the shoulders from the harnesses.
(48:16):
I didn't know much about this. I just saw it
on the news every now and then. I thought, oh,
neat these working dogs out racing. But um, I'm gonna
go ahead and say no more I did, or odd
shut it down. Oh yeah, yeah, you're killing dogs for
the entertainment of people. I know it's rare, and I
know these mushers really care for these dogs and care
(48:38):
for their well being and do all they can to
ensure their safety. But to me, if dogs are dying
at all in training, in the race, after the race,
then you just shouldn't do anymore, or at the very least, uh,
you know, shorten the race, or do something to ensure
that these dogs don't die. Ever, So there's there's a
there's a couple of schools that thought. Peter is very
(48:58):
much opposed to the Iditarod and dog sled racing in general.
They're like, just don't hook a dog up to a sled.
That's our stance. Now are they against recreational sledding? There
against all kinds of sledding, every every sleds What I
couldn't find if you had like six dogs and you
sled it over to your friends and they were your
family dogs, Peter says, don't do that. I thought it
(49:21):
was just competition. There there's a group called the Sled
Dog Action Coalition. Yes, they are opposed to the iditarod,
But they don't have a problem with humane and well
done recreational mushing. Um. The Humane Society of the United
States opposed to the ididar rod. But um is uh,
(49:46):
they don't have a stance on mushing whatsoever. But Peter
it says, don't don't use a dog as a draft animal,
even for your own recreation. Um. But if you'll notice,
the one common thread is that all these groups are
opposed to the idea it a rod itself. They are
saying like, even if you have vets on at every checkpoint,
(50:06):
apparently the mushers can um overrule the vets ruling. If
a vets like this dog needs to come out, the
musher can be like, get lost and the vet doesn't
have any recourse. Um, And that's totally well within the rules.
But even if you do have vets looking after them,
and even if Peter has successfully promoted change and the
(50:26):
idea ROD is credited for really facing up to a
lot of the problems that the dogs face and dealing
with them and having like a very low tolerance for
animal cruelty, especially um, the very fact that you're hooking
up animals too sled and driving them miles over eight
days is in and of itself, to a lot of critics,
(50:49):
inhumane for the entertainment of people. Even take that away
for whatever reason. It's it's inhumane, like, well take it away.
But it's not like the old days where you needed
to deliver the mail's serums. I mean, it's purely for
entertainment at this point. And I know it's tradition, and
people that are into this are gonna say, like, you
know that you could do anything these days. Definitely, this
(51:13):
is a proud old tradition, like just stay We've moved
to Alaska for a reason. Stay out of my business. Um.
And they definitely do take that stance for sure. But
that's not to say that mushers are cruel awful people.
By all accounts, most of them are very good to
their animals because they want them to perform well. Uh
they are like family to them in most cases. But
(51:36):
you still hear about these uh terrible things that happen
uh in the in the training. And it's not just
the race itself, it's the training, it's the pens. They'll
they'll they still call animals. There's one guy named Frank Winkler.
Two times I did a ride racer. He was charged
with fourteen counts of cruelty two animals. When UH animal
(51:58):
control officer are found a craze of dead and dying
puppies in his truck. He said he couldn't afford to
take him to the vet. So they'll call the dogs
like if you have a deformity, if you're just not
good enough, they will still kill that's what calling means.
Kill the puppies. And they don't call them by injecting
them with um, you know, sodium pentethal or some gassing them.
(52:20):
A lot of them, A lot of kennels, even like
professional kennels UM will shoot them. And the I did
a rod committee. That's that's within their rules. Like you
can shoot a dog to cull it. Colling is fine,
and how you call it um is okay. Apparently beating
a dog to death is not really acceptable. But that's
what Frank Winkler did. But for he did he shot
(52:43):
some and then I guess he ran out of bullets
and started using an axe handle and he was an
I did rod racer um. And that's a problem with
the kennels that there are a lot of kennels out
there that don't treat their dogs very well. They don't
feed them enough, they treat them fairly and humanely, and
just the very fact that they cold dogs that aren't
good enough is is um reprehensible to a lot of people. Yeah,
(53:05):
me included at the u S UH. And I want
to say, and me too, like I think this is
there's a there's a there's a part of me that
I'm like, this is not my thing that's up in Alaska.
But dogs belong to humanity. Well, yeah, it's like when
we did the bullfighting thing, like you can take your
tradition and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. And again,
(53:28):
culling isn't something that all breeders do, all kennels do. Uh.
Many of the dogs now that aren't capable or adopted
out to loving families, which is great, but culling is
still a part of the culture and some kennels, uh
the u S crab Lunic Kennel and aspin Colorado UH
say that as many as thirty five dogs have been
killed annually by gunshot to the head. And the manager said,
(53:51):
you know, culling dates back hundreds of years. It's nothing new.
It's part of the circle of life for this dog
sled dog. The circle of life, the nine millimeter of
the brain is these so um, yeah, wow, it's part
of the circle of life. Huh, that's what are you said?
And so Chuck. A lot of this stuff is reserved
(54:11):
for the I did a rod specifically, and the kennels
that supply dogs for the idea rod. But just having
a sled dog in and of itself is not necessarily
a bad thing, or even using a dog for a
sled dog is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't
think I take a heart line as PA. Maybe like
if you want to recreationally much Uh, there is a long,
(54:32):
great history of it. I have no problem with it
because these dogs do love to run. Uh, they love
to pull, and that's their job. But I just can't
get behind endurance racing if these dogs are being injured
or if they die from it. It's just my opinion.
I know a lot of people disagree. We don't put
opinions in here much, but one argument I don't want
to hear is that we should shut down all endurance
(54:52):
racing for humans in because humans can get injured and die.
The key difference here is humans have free will and
they elect to do so. Uh big difference between animals
and humans that it's just not a comparison I think
you should make. Okay, Well, if you want to know
more in the meantime about the I Did Rod, you
can go watch it. You can go to I Did
a Rod dot com. I believe in track the Racers
(55:13):
um and you can also read how the I did
Rod works on how stuff works by typing those words
in the search part how stuff works dot com and
uh say said search part, it's time for listener now,
Hey guys, I'm a registered dietitian. I realized I spent
a lot of my day tech talking about the three
things in my email title, which was poop. Listen to
(55:33):
the Poop podcast on the way to work today and
really enjoyed it. As someone who regularly discusses poop and digestion,
it's great to hear it on a podcast. Also, I
think you guys should do a breastfeeding episode. Breastfeeding is
super fascinating. Uh so, thanks for being great in car entertainment.
I came across this gem of a conversation a few
years back because, uh, you guys were asking for different
names for taking a poop, and she said someone had
(55:56):
written name your poop after a movie on a bathroom wall,
And of course a plenty list ensued. And here are
some of my favorites. The Great Escape and by the way,
we heard from a lot of people with great names.
Children of the Corn, The Exorcist, Operation Dumbo, Drop e
(56:17):
t the Extraterrestrian, I don't get held, I don't. I
didn't get the Exors, Rosemary's Baby not bad, the hurt Locker,
mud Gross, Apocalypse now not bad, easy writer, and there
will be blood gross so gross. So the first part
(56:42):
there's actually two emails. The first part was from Sarah uh,
and then the boop movies was from read Sarah. I
don't want you to be associated with that. What was Sara?
He was the one that said that that gress feeding
would be good. And she's a dietitian and she talks
a lot about poop. So we should do a breast
feeding one again if it canna be a hornet's nest.
(57:04):
But we could do it. Sure, we just have to
research it because there's no article on how stuff works.
They think about it. It's worthwhile. Okay, sounds good, uh,
But if you want to get in touch with us
in the meantime. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast that how Stuff Works
(57:26):
dot com and it's always joined us out at home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
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