DOG SLEDDING
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:
Discouraged by the loss of a
dog due to heart attack, the only dog
death during the 1994 Iditarod sled race,
Susan Butcher, 39, announced March
21 that she won’t enter the race in 1995,
and said she would sell most of her ken-
nel. Butcher has competed in every
Iditarod since 1978, recording four vic-
tories and 15 finishes in the top 10 while
crusading for humane dog care and han-
dling. In 1991 she surrendered a lead
and allowed her longtime archrival Rick
Swenson to become the first five-time
winner, rather than risk her dogs’ lives
in a blizzard.
The last 14 huskies in
Antarctica were flown back to their
ancestral home in Quebec in late March,
in keeping with an international treaty
that bars dogs from the region to protect
marine mammals from canine distemper.
Upon arrival at the Cree village of
Chisasabi, the team was to run in har-
ness for the last 500 miles to the Inuit
village of Inukjuak, where the British
Antarctic Survey bought their forebears
about 45 years ago.
Veteran musher William
Orazietti, 50, of Sault St. Marie,
Ontario, drowned February 20 along
with eight of his 10 dogs when they fell
through thin ice in Little Bay De Noc,
Michigan, after straying four miles off
course during the Upper Peninsula 200
Sled Dog Championship.
