The top athlete in the world is not in the Olympics. He's on the Iditarod, and he doesn't have a Kennel Club pedigree, notes a recent article in Outside magazine.
It's 6:15 A.M. as I approach the home of one of the world's greatest athletes. His name is Tony, and he lives in a tiny plywood shack about 30 miles outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. By all rights, he should be exhausted. He got up at four and ran 22 miles in a mid-September, pre-dawn chill, and he wasn't running on nicely paved roads. He ran across fields and through muddy ruts on dirt trails while he and a few teammates tugged against harnesses attached to an ATV. By any measure, it was an absurdly tough workout, and it was even more remarkable because this was Tony's first hard run in months. So I'm amazed to see him standing outside his door, looking refreshed and eager.
As you may have guessed, Tony is a sled dog, which means he's a mutt, with a little Siberian husky in the mix, who's been specially bred for speed, desire, and resilience. When Tony's in peak condition, his VO2 max—a measure of his ability to take in and use oxygen in the bloodstream—tops out at more than 200 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. (Back when Lance Armstrong was racking up multiple Tour de France wins, his famously high VO2 maxed at around 85.) Tony may be a little flabby now, but in a few months, when he's competing in the Iditarod, he'll be able to run an average of 100 miles a day over eight or nine days, working at 50 percent of his VO2 max for hours on end. As part of a team, he can run sub-four-minute miles for 60 or 70 miles.
It turns out that DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- is studying sled dogs to see if they can find out how to improve the performance of humans under war-time stress.
Also interested in sled dogs is the Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation. And here's why:
YOU WOULDN'T KNOW IT to look at Tony, because he's pretty slight, but he's fed a diet that's mostly fat—up to 60 percent. "You'd kill a pet dog with that," says Erica McKenzie, a professor of large-animal medicine at Oregon State University who's studied sled dogs with Davis. If people ate such a diet, we'd all be diabetics living—not for long—on Lipitor. "
The Iditarod Sled Dog Race starts Saturday, March 6th and goes for about 12 days as the dogs run the 1,600-mile long course.
The lack of a pedigree should not surprise sled dog people, they're breeding to get the best from their dogs, dogs that can perform. It would be interesting to have a competition between these sled dogs and kennel club sled dogs.
ReplyDeleteThe whole story is interesting because of its applications for humans.
http://www.helpsleddogs.org/
ReplyDeleteyour thoughts?
Totally astounded by the performance statistics that are given here. A working dog is a wondrous thing indeed.
ReplyDeleteAndy, the Iditarod is heavily monitored, is continuously filmed, is sponsored by corporations, and has veterinarians at every stage. Any mention of that?
ReplyDeleteAny mention of the fact that at nearly every Olympics a human athlete dies (including the winter Olympics that just ended)?
The simple story is that no one on the planet cares more about their dogs than Iditarod mushers -- their family fortunes and entire lives revolve around these dogs.
Are they working dogs? Sure. Are there risks? Sure. Alaska is all about risk -- watch "Ice Road Truckers" or "The Deadlies Catch." But are those risks fenced out as much as possible? Absolutely.
I lost a dog while hunting a few years ago due to a black widow spider bite. It was a good death -- the dog has just worked four groundhogs underground, she was doing what she loved to do and what she lived to do. I want to die like she did -- boots on doing what I love. And yes, I would be happy to live -- and die -- an Iditarod Sled Dog. We should all be so fortunate!
P.
Those dogs may not have kennel club pedigrees, but you can bet your bippee their ancestries are recorded, and for many generations.
ReplyDeleteMushers shave it very fine in every area of husbandry to maximize their competitive advantage. Breeding selection is one of those areas.
One difference from kennel club show breeders is that the musher probably knows something significant about every dog in at least five generations of that pedigree. If an individual was not his own animal running on his own team, he was chosen for the musher's breeding program based on some specific virtue that the musher has personally evaluated.
Another difference is that the musher is probably experimenting with very wide outcrosses in order to import those specific virtues to his kennel. As such, he's likely to need patience; sometimes the F1 offspring of that outcross are not what he wants, but he can see what qualities their offspring will bring when the best of them are folded back into his kennel line.