Saturday, March 01, 2008
Running for the money?
I was reading something over at the Anchorage Daily News website that was saying that Martin Buser was complaining about the GPS deal that lets fans watch where the teams are in real time. The complaint? He's not being paid enough to give away his race secrets. ::shakes head:: I swear that man is only in it for the money, nothing else. Don't believe me? Ask what he gets for speaking at a non-profit deal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The dogs do all the work in the Iditarod and get no benefit. The race is fueled by greed and mushers' desire for fame and attention. Buser is like all the other mushers.
The Iditarod exists for the mushers and to attract people to AK in the slow season.
The race is terribly cruel to dogs and should be banned. For the facts, visit http://www.helpsleddogs.org.
I actually had to take some time before I responded to this, I just... I don't know. I'm always in awe of people that jump all over the Iditarod and scream "Dog abuse!" - particularly the ones that live in Florida?!?!? Yeah, they really know what is happening to dogs in Alaska.
There are situations in everything where you can find bad stuff, and if all you want to focus on is the bad then that is all you will see. I know I snapped about Buser, and I do think he is more than a little stuck up from the little I have heard about him, but I also know the man dotes on his dogs.
There are many many mushers that their dogs are their family, they love them and talk to them and when it gets too cold or the dog gets ill or injured they take them inside to sleep in the house with them.
If you want to target dog abuse, try going after people that make the dogs fight - that is dog abuse.
The Iditarod is very closely watched with vets checking the health of the dogs at the checkpoints and if a dog is found to be doing poorly the musher is yanked. There are a lot of things in place to make sure the dogs are taken good care of. This race is all about the dogs. One musher even said that the dogs, every one of them, should be given all the credit possible for running the race.
Watch them as they cross the line in Nome, the dogs are healthy and happy and enjoying life to its fullest. They enter checkpoints bounding in the air and ready to run again, eager to be out and racing. They were bred to run and this is as wonderful to them as a long distance marathon is to a marathon runner. You don't stop marathons because there are those who should not run them running them, why scream to stop the dog races?
I don't know why there is so much flack about it, but I do know that it is not by people that have paid attention to the dogs as a whole. They focus on the bad and blow it up to get attention.
I suggest anyone that wants to know the facts spend time at a musher's kennel, then watch the race start and hop to a few checkpoints along the trail, stand at the burled arch in Nome to see what the teams look like entering Nome.
Don't take second hand trash about the race and scream it's a horrible thing, go learn first hand what it is all about and what the dogs are like. I think you'll see they are high spirited energetic dogs that are nothing like Fifi laying on her feather dog bed or Brutus slowly pacing his fenced guard dog enclosure. They are full of energy, high maintenance dogs that have to be taken out and run for them to be truly happy.
Post a Comment