IDITAROD: the last great race.

We all know the story of Balto thanks to an animated film produced by Amblimation and released in US cinemas on December 22, in the 1995.

Fewer people know that even today, the journey made known by Balto and his companions in 1925, relives in an extreme race in which men and dogs defy the wildest Alaska: the Iditarod.

This race that is defined "the last great race on Earth" according to one of its creators, has two reasons to exist:

1) to save the culture of the sled dog and the Alaskan huskies, which had been eliminated from existence due to the introduction of snowmobiles in Alaska;

2) to preserve the historic Iditarod trail between Seward and Nome.The 2018 edition will start in about eight hours, winding along more than a thousand miles of route.

Views of the most beautiful Mother Nature has to offer, but also dangerous and deadly pitfalls around the corner. Jagged mountains, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of windswept coast present themselves to the mushers and their dog teams. Temperatures far below freezing, winds that can cause complete loss of visibility, risks of overflow, long hours of darkness and dangerous climbs and side hills. This is the Iditarod. The race attracts every year the attention of a very high number of fans and detractors, the first are the musher and their families, a large number of volunteers of all kinds and spectators from everywhere, in the latter we count the associations for animal rights, which lash out against the sponsors to stop what they think is a barbarity.
Although books such as "Fast into the Night" by Debbie Moderow published in 2016, make us support the first and believe that there may be an ethical version of the race, investigations such as those carried out by PETA, make us think of a completely different opinion, between cruelty, mistreatment and doping, Balto's happy and epic story (which was not so happy then) fades more and more. Then? At this point we need to make two considerations:
1) Iditarod is not a walk, just ask Ausilia Vistarini to understand how extreme it is for a human being. In fact, there is a version called "Iditarod trail invitational" that can be traveled without dogs using a bike, skis or feet as means of transport.
2) Personally I am not opposed to employing an animal in a job, but no one should be a slave or operate in conditions that can cause damage or even death.
That said, the position of PETA not surprising, given the precedents and its ideals, but for me the problem is not the race itself, but the mentality with which some musher face it, with the idea of the dog that have a mere instrument at their service, with the sole purpose of receiving eternal glorification.
Last clarification, what PETA tells for years is true, only in my opinion, is a non-global point of view.
Perhaps you should run it only as Moderow did, or banish it forever. On me has always exercised a primordial charm, for the relationship that you have to develop with your dogs, the awe with which you challenge an uncontaminated nature, cold, harsh, hard, but beautiful and pure, the immense solitude that you prepare to face up to. From my point of view, the Iditarod should be a symbol of the most profound relationship that we have managed to establish with another species, the one with the dog, thanks to which for about 15.000 years we face all the pitfalls of the Nature with an extra gear .