Final signature count: 42,108

42,108 signatures toward our 50,000 goal

The graceful beauty and power of a husky barreling through snow shouldn’t invoke feelings of suffering and torture. But every year since 1973, during Alaska’s 1,000-mile Iditarod race in early March, hundreds are forced into a state-sanctioned nightmare¹.

The Iditarod has long been controversial for its treatment of sled dogs. They’re whipped and driven to run more than 100 miles a day in sub-zero temperatures². And while the power to keep those dogs safe lies with the State of Alaska, exemptions are actually in place precluding the dogs from protection under animal cruelty laws³.

In almost all of the Iditarod races, at least one dog death has occurred.

At least 147 dogs have died in the history of the race, with 15 to 19 falling dead from overwork in the very first, in 1973⁴. At least 107 dogs were dead after the 1997 race. In 2009, five dogs died, leaving local veterinarians and animal rights workers helpless to do anything but watch⁵.

Throughout the years, dogs have been struck and killed by a snowmachines and snowmobiles⁶. Others are worked so hard that they spit up intestinal fluids, which are just as quickly inhaled, leading to “aspiration induced pneumonia⁷.”

The dogs that aren’t killed by machines are killed by the effects of hyperexhaustion as they burn over 12,000 calories a day, for 9 straight days or longer. Their bodies are later tossed into the dump⁸.

“That first race (1973), from Anchorage to McGrath, all you could see along the trail was dog blood and dead dogs,” McGrath, AK resident Ted Almasy told the Wasilla Frontiersman 1986. “That’s when I got into it with them. After each Iditarod, we used to see dead dogs at the dump. You’d see them poor dogs, blood coming out of both ends⁹.”

This is not how these dogs deserve to live.

Sign below and tell the Governor of Alaska to remove the clause exempting competition sled dogs from its animal cruelty laws.