Anchorage Daily News
ON THE IDITAROD TRAIL -- Like any extreme sport, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race pushes limits -- both human and canine. The 1,100-mile wilderness trail from Anchorage to Nome poses life-threatening obstacles to mushers and dog teams, including rugged terrain, bitter cold, bone-chilling winds, moose and buffalo encounters and mind-numbing exhaustion, to name a few.
John Bramante, who finished 48th this year, has concluded the Iditarod is just not worth the punishment. The Kasilof physician and father of two won't run the race again, he said, because of the wear and tear it inflicted on his dogs.
"It's hard to watch the dogs go through what they do and feel comfortable," the 38-year-old musher said during a rest stop at McGrath, midway through the March race.
While massaging tired muscles, tending to bloody paws and treating a case of penile frostbite suffered by one of his lead dogs, Bramante said he was fighting the urge to scratch.
"It's a fallacy to think that the dogs aren't hurting," said Bramante.
Most mushers would agree dogs sometimes hurt during the Iditarod, but they note that pain is an inherent fact of all endurance sports. The tricky part comes in drawing a line between what constitutes tough and what constitutes cruel.
Most race veterinarians argue that well-intentioned overfeeding and underexercising of pampered house dogs is far worse than Iditarod-related injuries.
"I see more abuse and mistreatment in pet dogs," said veterinarian Mike Gascolgne after examining teams at the Finger Lake checkpoint. "These dogs are healthy and they love their job."
From Brisbane, Australia, Gascolgne specializes in treating greyhounds.
Most Iditarod mushers pride themselves on the care and attention they give their dogs and say a well-trained and looked-after team can handle the thousand-plus-mile journey with minimal problems.
Bramante, however, questions how many mushers are up to the challenge of providing top-notch dog care while maintaining a competitive Iditarod pace. He wonders about mushers who say their dogs don't experience hardship.
"They delude themselves," he said.
Bramante emphasized repeatedly that his feelings about the Iditarod are his own. He underscored that he is not passing judgment on how other mushers run the race.
"We all have our own sensibilities," Bramante said. "You just have to decide for yourself."
STOMACH PROBLEMS
Two dogs died running the Iditarod this year. One suffered a fatal spinal injury after getting tangled in musher Jim Oehlschlaeger's gangline, the rope that connects the team to the sled. Another dog owned by well-known musher DeeDee Jonrowe died during post-race surgery in Anchorage to repair a bleeding gastric ulcer, a common illness among racing sled dogs.
The Iditarod is promoting research to better understand why canine competitors are prone to gastrointestinal abnormalities, said chief race veterinarian Stuart Nelson Jr. The stomachs of about 75 dogs were examined during and after the race last year and a relatively high percentage had gastric problems, he said. Stress, bacteria, diet and a multitude of other factors can cause ulcers, said race vet Lannie Hamilton after treating Jonrowe's sick dog in White Mountain.
This year, three Iditarod mushers -- Robert Bundtzen, Jim Lanier and Lisa Frederic -- volunteered to have their dogs included in a blind study of gastric problems, Nelson said. Half of the dogs were given an acid-suppressing drug while the others ingested a placebo. The goal is to see if medications can be used to curb ulcers on the trail, Nelson said. The data will be examined by researchers at Texas A&M and Oklahoma State Universities and compiled in a report.
DOG DEATHS
Although approximately 35 veterinarians scrutinize the conditions of Iditarod dogs throughout the race, and the teams undergo pre-race vet checks that include heart monitoring and blood tests, the Iditarod has never been run without a canine fatality. Sixty-four dogs have died in the race since 1983, said Iditarod executive director Stan Hooley. There are no official records on dogs deaths for the first 10 years of the Iditarod, he said.
But the total death toll over the 30-year history of the race has been estimated at 119 dogs, including the two dead this year. Casualties were high in early races but have been reduced to one to five deaths per race for the past 15 years.
A Daily News analysis in the late 1990s found dogs seemed to fare best in fast races. In the five fastest races between 1986 and 1996, dog deaths averaged 2.2; in the five slowest races, the rate was 3.6.
Better screening, improved diet, a better-groomed trail, and breeding for stamina and speed are credited with lowering mortality rates. Race supporters say one or two deaths is not a high figure since in any group of roughly 1,000 dogs, a similar number will likely die over the course of nine or 10 days.
Critics counter that argument is flawed because any random group would contain aging dogs that would be expected to die of natural causes, whereas most Iditarod dogs are in their prime.
Both race critics and mushers would like to see a race free of dog deaths. For some of the mushers, the dogs in their team are more like family members than working animals.
Bramante and his wife keep a small kennel of 25 sled dogs. The doctor ran his first and only other Iditarod in 2000 and finished in 52nd place. Unlike most of the Iditarod frontrunners who train and run their kennels fulltime, Bramante works a day job and mushes in his spare time. To prepare for this year's race, he put about 1,700 miles on the team.
"They were not undermiled," he said in response to a question about whether his team might have struggled from lack of training.
Bramante said he believes it is possible for some of the Iditarod's top mushers to complete the race without putting their dogs through misery. But it probably takes a large enough kennel to be able to select dogs with exceptional genes and talent, he said.
A fellow Kenai Peninsula musher with a small kennel defied that reasoning this year. Jon Little of Kasilof claimed fourth place in the Iditarod, an impressive feat since Little owns 24 dogs and works fulltime as a Daily News reporter.
But Little said he runs his kennel differently from Bramante in that he sells and gives away dogs, and keeps only the best. Bramante's dogs are more like members of the family. Once they're in the kennel, they stay, regardless of their racing potential.
HARD WORK
Iditarod rookie Harmony Kanavle said she shares Bramante's concern for the dogs, to a point.
"It's definitely hard on the dogs," the 28-year-old Montana musher said. "But it's like any competitive sport. Look at the Olympics. That's definitely no picnic."
At the top levels of competition, all sports are physically demanding on the athletes -- be they canine, equine or human. Some argue that the Iditarod is as tough on the mushers as on the dogs, even though the dogs do the work of pulling musher and sled. While the dogs get eight to 12 hours rest every day, the mushers often make do with two or three hours because of the time involved in caring for their teams.
Kanavle spent several hours in McGrath massaging all the limbs of every dog in her team. She was busy rubbing ointment into one of her dog's forelegs even while being interviewed.
Her husband and kennel partner, Jason Barron, 30, shared her pragmatic view on working dogs.
"Some of the best things in life come with a price," he said. "Part of the price is hard work, and hard work doesn't always feel good."
Some mushers say their dogs get stronger as the race progresses, and there's some scientific research to support that claim.
A 1998 study of Iditarod dogs published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found indications that dogs dropped within the first 500 miles of the race showed greater signs of muscle damage than dogs that went on to complete the race. Vets theorized that one of the reasons might be that some dogs just aren't up to the rigors of ultra-long distance marathoning and thus get dropped early for fatigue or lameness.
In the beginning of the race, Bramante said his team looked "shell-shocked." But by the time the team hit the Yukon River, the attitude of the dogs shifted. They seemed to realize that if they ran for a few hours, they would get food and sleep, and it would be fine to continue, Bramante said from his home in Kasilof after the race.
RACE SPEED
If mushers still ran the Iditarod as they did in its infancy -- traveling slower and camping out more -- the Iditarod would be more enjoyable and easier on the dogs, Bramante said. In the early years, the winning musher typically took two to three weeks to complete the race. This year, Martin Buser set a race record by finishing in eight days, 22 hours, 46 minutes.
The 1998 veterinary study on the relationship between Iditarod speeds and sled-dog health concluded "the speed at which (dogs) completed the race did not influence the degree of muscle injury."
"Interestingly," the study added, "there was no relationship between finishing order and body weight loss. This indicates that even in the most competitive teams, dogs receive adequate feed and water to meet the large energy and water requirements of running 1,100 miles in less than 10 days."
Bramante, thoughtful and well-spoken, distances himself from animal rights activists who attack the race as cruel. He also said he believes in the role of working dogs and is grateful for the efforts of some 4,000 race volunteers who make the Iditarod happen.
"They allowed me to travel across Alaska by dog sled," he said. "Of course, I probably should only have done it once."
Unlike some other mushers who grew up on sled runners, Bramante's journey to the Iditarod can best be described as unlikely. He spent his childhood in heavily populated northern New Jersey, in an affluent suburb across the Hudson River from New York City. After graduating from Middlebury College, Bramante attended medical school in New York and later held the prestigious position of chief resident at Providence Medical Center in Seattle.
Lured by the possibility of a remote lifestyle, he joined a medical practice in Soldotna in 1993. He and his family settled in there. Bramante started mingling with local dog drivers, and the mushing bug bit.
As for why he decided to run the race a second time if he had serious misgivings, Bramante said he waffled until the entry deadline.
"I'm not sure why I did it other than the fact that I have good dogs, and I knew I could correct some of the mistakes I made as a rookie," he said.
Reporter Paula Dobbyn can be reached at pdobbyn@adn.com or 907 257-4317. Reporter Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com or 907 257-4588.
