Animal Person
An Iditarod to Endorse

Did you see "Sport Meets Survival: An Iditarod Without Dogs" in the New York Times?

It is promoted as the longest, most remote winter ultrarace in the world, a slog across century-old marshland trails from the outpost of Knik over the Farewell Hills, up the Yukon River, through the ghost towns of the Kuskokwim Mountains and on to the Bering Sea.

The race’s start date has been set for March 1, 2009, a week in advance of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. . . .

In nine years of racing, only 28 men and 2 women have completed the full route to Nome, including Tim Hewitt, a lawyer from Latrobe, Pa., who reached the finish on foot in 2001, 2004 and 2008. About 90 percent of the entrants have dropped out along the trail.

Now that's a test of human endurance. As opposed to riding on a sled while a team of dogs does the hard work. The Iditarod with sled dogs, as you probably know, is a disgraceful use of man's best friend that its proponents will proclaim the dogs just love. They defend what they do to the dogs by confusing the dogs' love of running with some kind of desire to run over 1,000 miles in under two weeks, and perhaps die in the process.

Strange.

I like to promote real sporting events. You know, the ones where the athletes have decided to participate and thoroughly understand the risks. That eliminates any activity labeled "sport" that involves a sentient nonhuman, such as a bull, a horse, a greyhound, a pit bull, an Alaskan Husky, a rooster or a fish. Any fish. Thrown back or not.

There are plenty of things we can do to demonstrate how fit, fast, strong or brave we are if that's important to us. We don't need to use any animal other than a human one, and we don't have a right to.