Cali King, the 18 year old rookie, seems to be making up some of the lost time between Fairbanks and Manley. She is now 50th into Tanana, with some 9 mushers still to make that checkpoint. Robert Sorlie is out in front, having already made it to Ruby. Several teams have already dropped a dog or two. This cute picture:
Is off the home page of the Iditarod. The dog on the sled is "Fire", one of Debbie Manderow's dogs which is being given a ride to Manley. The dog will, presumably, be dropped from the race because of injury, illness or tiredness. All dogs must make it to the next checkpoint, hence the dog getting a ride.
It is not unusual for dogs to get dropped even at the beginning of the race. Since there is an allowed maximum of 16 dogs (12 dogs minimum) to start the race, some mushers will add in speed pulling dogs. These dogs have great speed and are powerful pullers, but don't have the endurance of the rest of the team. They help the team out by taking on more of a workload than the other dogs, thus allowing the endurance dogs to stay relatively fresh. When the speed dogs get tired, they are dropped from the team so they don't become a liability or get hurt trying to go further. Mushers can not add dogs that did not start the race, so not many of these dogs are used.
Comments