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Mushers Pre-Race Preparations

Did you ever wonder what the mushers are up to during the week prior to the race?

by June Price

02/27/2006

Did you ever wonder what the mushers are up to during the week prior to the race? Sitting around relaxing, enjoying their dogs, right? Nope, the week prior to the start of the Iditarod is jam packed for them. While taking care of their dogs and keeping them loose and ready to go is a given, there are a host of “must do” activities in which they are required to participate.

As noted earlier, one of them involves having blood work and EKG’s done on their team dogs. Exactly a week before the Restart of Iditarod 2006, Doug Swingley was at Iditarod Headquarters for his appointment with the vet team in charge. For mushers, it’s a time of unloading dogs and taking them in and out of the trailer. Swingley, show in the photo, has just taken one of Katie Davis’ dogs out of their trailer – she’s running the Swingley puppy team – and is headed to the trailer. If you’ve ever wondered why the dogs are moved with their front feet held off the ground, it’s a safety issue. These dogs are tremendously powerful and this allows the musher more control and don’t hurt the dog at all. Ironically, as they reach the trailer, it’s there that the dogs meet one of what the dogs seem to consider one of the scariest obstacles in the entire Iditarod, climbing the grated steps into the trailer. As a result, you’ll see most mushers carrying dog after dog up the steps and into the trailer.

Once inside, the procedure described earlier commences. Dogs are soothed by handlers and mushers as the vet tech team swings into action time after time. Blood is drawn and carefully labeled, and then the dogs are put on a table for the EKG reading. In this case, Melanie Shirilla, wife of Doug Swingley, was on hand to calm the dogs by sitting at the head of the table to help restrain and calm them. Davis held them for the blood work with Swingley, just in from Montana, was in charge of getting forty plus dogs in and out for testing.

Nope, I think it’s safe to say the mushers aren’t relaxing as they await Iditarod 2006.