...is what I'm doing a bit of research on right now. We used to haul sled dogs both as full charters (meaning it was the dogs chained down in a big snarling mass in the back of the plane on a bunch of tarps and the musher and his sled on board) and also as freight (meaning three or four dogs would get dumped into a dog crate until none of them could move) until we all got so disgusted by every part of the sled dog world that we just quit. The dogs were crammed in the crates (first we said only three dogs to a crate, then only two and then we just said no more) or fighting each other on the charters (not to mention rendering our plane unusable for a least a day) and it just was not pleasant for anyone.

Sometimes, even at the Company, the money just wasn't good enough.

After Eight Belles died at the Derby I took another look at my notes for the sled dog chapter and realized that a lot of people probably don't know what a sled dog really is. The ones you see on tv or in the movies are big - at least 75 or 80 pounds. That is what a sled dog used to be, decades ago, when they were used as actual working dogs to pull sleds. Now they are bred strictly to run fast and that means they are small, really small. Most around 45-50 pounds. They also rarely ever get bathed, never brushed, and live their entire lives outside at the end of a chain usually in a "dog lot" surrounded by twenty or fifty or a hundred and fifty other dogs.

If you're wondering why they run so fast it's because that's the only time they get to go anywhere more than six feet.

Sled dogs have been bred down just as race horses have been bred up (or at least up in size of muscle but down in size of legs). It's an interesting thing, this messing around with animal physiology solely for made-up contests. Since the original Iditarod there really has been no reason to run dogs. Most people keep them because their family always has or newcomers do it out of longing for the Alaska-frontier dream life they've read in books. They are expensive though, if you take care of them. A lot of food, a lot of shots. I knew several people who got dogs and then couldn't take care of them. That's why the Fairbanks animal shelter has a dog lot outside; it's someplace to keep all those huskies that no one wants anymore.

There is an interesting correlation between sled dogs and racehorses - here's the relevant bit from Eight Belles' death:

What's going on here? By far the biggest problem is that the thoroughbreds the sport is producing -- which by nature's design are blessed with high speed but cursed with spindly legs -- are without question less sturdy than ever before. Worse yet, horses in high-profile races -- including other recent televised victims Barbaro, George Washington and Pine Island -- are especially at risk because they are the fastest of the breed with a fierce determination to win that pushes their brittle legs to the limit.

This increasing fragility didn't happen overnight, but gradually over decades. Trainers have long privately complained that their horses are falling apart.

I never met a sled dog that didn't want off that chain and I never saw one that didn't start running the minute it was free. The owners had to hold on to them the entire time they were loaded. Back then, I thought that was just how sled dogs were now I know they just wanted to get away; I wonder if Eight Belles felt that too.

Some of the chapters are less fun to write than others.

{Post pic: Khaba is up for adoption at the Fairbanks animal shelter. She's two years old and described as "large". Volunteers took her out and said she pulled well.]