Miserable Dog Pleads His Case on Local Buses During Iditarod

PETA Ads Calling For End to Race Will Run on Public Transport Vehicles Through March 17

For Immediate Release:
February 4, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

In the run-up to the Iditarod, PETA has placed an ad on public buses in Anchorage that shows one of the hundreds of dogs who are kept chained up in the snow in freezing-cold temperatures—which is how dogs forced to race are typically kept—at a kennel owned by former Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey. Next to the dog are the words “Iditarod: Chained, Suffering, and Dying Dogs. End the Race.” The ads will run until March 17, when the 2019 Iditarod ends.

“When not being forced to run from Anchorage to Nome so fast that their hearts can give out, the dogs are chained to barrels or wooden boxes in the ice and snow,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on kind people everywhere to demand an end to the outdated, cruel use of dogs in the Iditarod and urging organizers to have the race evolve by featuring human endurance racers, cross-country skiers, or snowmobilers instead.”

More than 150 dogs have died during the Iditarod’s history, and that number doesn’t include the countless ones who died during the off-season while chained to a post or who were killed simply because they couldn’t run fast enough. The race forces dogs to run up to 100 miles a day across treacherous ice and in subzero temperatures. They sustain bloody paws, stress fractures, and other painful injuries. During the 2018 Iditarod, 350 dogs were pulled from the race, likely because of illness, exhaustion, or injury, and one died after choking on his own vomit—the leading cause of death for dogs who don’t survive the event.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—is calling on Chrysler, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, and Alaska Airlines to join Costco, Jack Daniel’s, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Pizza Hut, Rite Aid, Safeway, Wells Fargo, and the many other companies that have ended their Iditarod sponsorships.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.