Quote:
Originally Posted by Graystoke
What an endurance race. Looking at the standings it gives information about number of dogs checked in. I see some mushers with 9 dogs and others with as much as 14. I know very little about the race, but wouldn’t more dogs be better? I mean dogs kept fresh are weight, but a rotation seems beneficial.
Or am I interpreting this all wrong?
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That's a good question without a real easy answer. You have to have at least 8 dogs to finish. If you have to drop a dog and you are left with 7 dogs, you are forced to scratch.
That said, there are different reasons to drop a dog. First and most obviously, some dog might not be feeling well or might be injured. They can get injured from the terrain, from being kicked by a moose, from getting tangled in the leads and the musher can't stop the rest of the team in time. Every musher I know absolutely loves their dogs and if they don't think a dog is doing well or if they have reason to think the dog might be injured, they will drop a dog at a check point. There's a whole group of volunteer pilots that use their planes to fly supplies to check points and return with whatever needs to be returned. Sometimes, that's a dog.
Sometimes, a dog might be too young to make it the whole way and so you run them in race conditions knowing that you'll drop them along the way. It helps train the dog and gives the musher an idea of what the dog is capable of.
Dogs sometimes escape and sled dogs .... there's no real gentle way to put this, but they're crazy. Every sled dog I've encountered is just bat shit crazy. And if they get out of the harness, they might run alongside the team or they might just run toward the last check point. There are numerous mushers who have lost hours searching for dogs that have escaped. And a musher might decide that a dog that has escaped once is just too much of a risk to carry.
Those are some reasons to drop dogs. And I can understand why thinking that more dogs means that you make better time, but that depends. Having 10 dogs that are disciplined and trained (as well as sled dogs can be) can make better time than having 14 or 16 that are not disciplined and trained.