Darling Straight, LOVED your dog-mushing story. So 19th century - such an amusing article about one of the last animal-abusing sports. Such darling little coats on the dogs in the accompanying photo too. But they aren't very edgy are they? I mean fashionably edgy, like Lagerfeld and Gaultier's bold return to sable and silver fox. Wouldn't it be delicious if one of those wonderful designers, who so unselfishly contribute so much to the advancement of civilization, designed a dog coat for next year's race with darling little bits of fur trim? Or even... oh be still my foolish heart... a whole fur coat for the dear doggies?

I loved your photo showing the dear doggies in their bright orange coats... but is orange really "their" colour, if you know what I mean darling Straight? Oh... but it's for the dear doggies' SAFETY isn't it! How kind and thoughtful all those HUNKY mushers are to their dogs. Well I don't mean the ones who smell like their dogs do I... there are limits to hunkiness, but you know what I mean don't you dear Straight - the ones who are so manly and push their dear dogs until they bleed and collapse and then shoot them... so deliciously 19th century, just like dear Jane Austen's romance novels, where the hunky man always gets his girl. Have you noticed? I do love dear Jane. (I don't like that nasty man, Charles Dickens, who so coarsely kept pointing out cruelty in his boringly preachy novels. Don't you just HATE being preached at about cruelty dear Straight?) Cruelty is SO unfashionable now I know, but you mustn't let those dreary radical animal rights rabble, who know NOTHING about fashion afterall, make you do anything as tawdry as real investigative and researched reportage. Fashion after all is very important and dog-sledding is getting more and more fashionable all the time, with the people who really matter I mean, isn't it dear Straight!

Wouldn't it have been too delicious to live when bear and bull baiting were all the rage? Or even better, to have lived when hunky slaves were thrown to the lions? Just think of the delicious fashion statement of fur-trimmed togas. That would have rocked the coliseum! OH... I can hardly get my breath just imagining the delicious envy of my full-length silver fox toga!

But I've wandered darling Straight... I just can't seem to help it... everything about mushing is so just deliciously fashionable and romantic. And you've understood that so well. I just know those dreary people are going to raise their uncultured voices at you... you know what I mean dear Straight don't you... in silly emails pointing out all the bald-faced cruelty, plain for anyone actually looking to see. Just ignore them... what do they know about fashion!

Must run... off to the dressmakers where I am having the darlingest little fur coat made for my old beagle, Gladys. Gladys loves it when I put a harness on her and whip her to make her run.... but I'm getting naughty dear Straight and must stop.

Ta ta darlings!

Judy Stone

P.S. Don't look at the nasty photos you will be sent by those animal rights people... too too crashingly boring!

Darling sled dogs all decked out for their fashion shoot....