Ad Blitz Takes Aim at Chrysler-Sponsored Iditarod

PETA Ups the Pressure on Car Company to Cut Ties With Deadly Dog Race

For Immediate Release:
March 2, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Detroit-headquartered Chrysler is facing PETA protests across the U.S.—thanks to a Chrysler franchise’s sponsorship of the deadly Iditarod dog race—and now, the group is raising the stakes even more. Leading up to the start of the race on Saturday, PETA is running a new ad on local television stations that shows viewers the widespread neglect and suffering of dogs used in the Iditarod.

The ad’s footage comes from PETA’s first-of-its-kind exposé of Iditarod champion mushers’ operations, which found that dogs were denied veterinary care for painful injuries, kept constantly chained next to dilapidated boxes and plastic barrels in the bitter cold and biting wind, and forced to run even when they were exhausted and dehydrated. A dog at one facility had sustained a crippling spinal cord injury that left her dragging her back legs, and dogs at another operation had worn-down, raw, and bloody paw pads from frantically running in tight circles at the end of their short metal chains.

“When they’re not being run to injury, exhaustion, and death on the Iditarod trail, dogs—just like those who live in our homes with us—are tied up in the snow with nothing to do but run in tight circles until their paws bleed,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “The Motor City has a right to know why PETA is so urgently calling on Chrysler to end its support for this abusive spectacle.”

PETA has held more than a dozen Chrysler protests across the country, including at the Chicago and Philadelphia auto shows and in Detroit just last week, during which protesters pulled a sled full of “dead dogs” around a busy downtown intersection. PETA has also rallied 145,000 of its supporters to demand that the car company end its support of the Iditarod, as Alaska Airlines just announced it will do. Other sponsors that have cut ties with the race include Coca-Cola, Costco, Jack Daniel’s, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Pizza Hut, Rite Aid, Safeway, State Farm, and Wells Fargo.

More than 150 dogs have died as a result of the Iditarod, not including countless others who died during the off-season while chained up or who were killed simply because they weren’t fast enough.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s ad will run dozens of times on WXYZ Detroit (ABC), WWJ (CBS), and WKBD (CW) through March 16.