The 1,000-mile trek to Alaska’s wind-scoured western coast from Anchorage to Nome (official slogan, there’s no place like Nome,) requires 16 world class dog athletes and one human coach, who goes along pretty much for the ride.
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This is not exactly a formula for team championships whose ingredients as near as I can tell are concentrated effort, unselfishness, and cooperation, all of which are in short supply among the canine set.
Sure at one time we hunted in packs, but we got over it as soon as we learned that if we’re charming enough around humans, food will come to us.
Still, that doesn’t mean we’re not fans, and for my money (as if I had any) nothing can top the IditarodTrail Sled Dog Race each March.
Humans are so darn proud of themselves when they can string together 26 miles of sustained running, and they give themselves all sorts of medals every four years for running distances as short as a 100 meters (that’s 109 yards for us American dogs)
Don’t make us laugh.
The 1,000-mile trek to Alaska’s wind-scoured western coast from Anchorage to Nome (official slogan, there’s no place like Nome,) requires 16 world class dog athletes and one human coach, who goes along pretty much for the ride.
Teams frequently race through blizzard conditions, sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds which can cause the wind chill to reach -100 degrees (that’s -73 degrees Celsius for European dogs).
And those 100 meter humans who think they should get a medal for less than 10 seconds work, might consider that the current record for the Iditarod is 8 days, 19 hours, 46 minutes, and 39 seconds.
Put that into your Olympic torch and smoke it.
Think of the training and concentration that’s needed to work cooperatively for eight days, knowing that your very survival is only as strong as your weakest link.
Think of the dedication, the drive, the commitment, the utter imperviousness to fatigue, pain, and downright boredom that must be endured.
Of course, I’m speaking about the dogs.
I’m sure there’s plenty of strategy that goes into the race but how many humans do you see harnessed to a sled, naked to the wind, and mushing through the slush?
Exactly.
My personal Iditarod man is defending champion Dallas Seavey, the race’s youngest winner who at age 25, reached the finish line an hour before his closest competitor by – get this – carrying his veteran dogs in his sled.
This is especially impressive since most of the time getting dogs to do anything together is like, well, herding cats.
Long before human psychologists discovered it, we practically wrote the book on attention deficit disorders.
Our sense of purpose rarely extends beyond our nose, and we mostly pay attention to whomever spoke to us last. We get so distracted by what we smell, hear, or see – which is pretty much everything – that we often forget what we were doing yesterday. An hour. OK, a minute ago.
What was I saying? Oh, I can tell you from experience that we have a loose sense of discipline.
We’d be more inclined to hear a starting gun as a suggestion rather than an order and when we hear the word mush, we think food.
So I take my hat off (if I had a hat, and if I could take it off) to the 16 real heroes of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Sure, their handler gets all the credit, but we know who does all the work.
They’re all on four legs.
See you around the tundra.
Theo Chipkin doesn't do email, but you can reach him through his agent at rchipkin@repub,com