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| The Crufts Iditarod Team |
The 2019 Iditarod starts on Saturday, March 2 in downtown Anchorage, Alaska while the Crufts dog show starts March 7 in Birmingham, England.
It is hard to imagine more different dog competitions.
One, is the world's longest dog race, stretching over 1,000 miles through two wilderness mountain ranges before ice-bound contestants turn up the wind-whipped Bering Sea coast, headed for home.
The other is a short walk on a string leash around a climate-controlled indoor ring before the pampered and powdered heave themselves into folding chairs and folding crates complaining about how totally knackered they are from the stress and excitement of it all.
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Crufts, of course, was originally called the Allied Terrier show.
From the beginning, it was a for-profit put up job founded by a dog food salesman who himself never owned a dog.
It is only the truth to say that not much has changed since the whole thing was turned over to the Kennel Club!
Now for a small funny.
A few years back I posted the above cartoon with a quote from Inbred Thinking, a post I wrote on this blog back in 2006:
I got a comment back.
Smiling (yes, I knew how it would go) I looked up her performance record and compared it to John Suter's Iditarod Poodle Team which ran that race from 1988 thru 1991.
In 2012, the last race Ms. Ramstead competed in, she came in 49th out of 52 contestants.
The standard Poodle team run by John Suter in his last run in 1991 did better, coming in 41st out of 60 teams.
So, to put a point on it, the team of Kennel Club Siberian Huskies in the Iditarod did not perform as well as Poodles doing the same job. Some humor there!
From the beginning, it was a for-profit put up job founded by a dog food salesman who himself never owned a dog.
It is only the truth to say that not much has changed since the whole thing was turned over to the Kennel Club!
Now for a small funny.
A few years back I posted the above cartoon with a quote from Inbred Thinking, a post I wrote on this blog back in 2006:
It is not an accident that Kennel Club greyhounds are not found at the track, that Kennel Club terriers are not found in the field, that Kennel Club sled dogs are not found on the Iditarod, or that Kennel Club border collies are not found on working sheep farms.
I got a comment back.
Karen Ramstead runs the Iditarod with her AKC registered and conformation-titled Siberians.
Smiling (yes, I knew how it would go) I looked up her performance record and compared it to John Suter's Iditarod Poodle Team which ran that race from 1988 thru 1991.
In 2012, the last race Ms. Ramstead competed in, she came in 49th out of 52 contestants.
The standard Poodle team run by John Suter in his last run in 1991 did better, coming in 41st out of 60 teams.
So, to put a point on it, the team of Kennel Club Siberian Huskies in the Iditarod did not perform as well as Poodles doing the same job. Some humor there!
Today, Poodles are not allowed to run on the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Race rules now say that “only dogs suitable for arctic travel” are permitted.
So what kind of dogs actually run the Iditarod ?
The dogs that win are Alaskan Huskies, which are not a breed, but a broad performance type that is a mix of Alaskan malamute, Siberian husky, German shorthaired pointer, Saluki, and Anatolian shepherds, among others.
In short, once again we find that the best purpose-bred performance dogs are not being bred within a closed registry where judges in ball gowns award zero points for work, health, and temperament.
In the field, beauty is as beauty does, and in Alaska not too many are going to put their life on the line behind a team of Kennel Club dogs.
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