PETA Statement on Musher Petit Continuing in the Iditarod

For Immediate Release:
March 11, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Vice President Colleen O’Brien in response to musher Nicolas Petit’s apparent decision to drop two dogs and force the rest to continue running in the Iditarod, despite reports that all the dogs on his team vomited and three of them had frostbite:

Nicolas Petit has decided to continue with the Iditarod, despite his admissions that one of the dogs he uses in this hideous race bit another one so severely while fighting over a scrap of food that her face was injured, that three dogs suffered from frostbite, and that all the dogs he’s using were vomiting. Even though aspiration pneumonia, resulting from inhaling their own vomit, is the leading cause of death for dogs in the Iditarod—with some dog deaths termed an “unpreventable hazard” by the race organizers—Petit reportedly dropped just two dogs and will force the rest to continue. As dogs begin to limp across the finish line, PETA urges the public to remember the sick and injured ones who haven’t made it—including more than 150 so far in the history of this wretched race.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that Petit also faced similar issues last year when two dogs on his team got into a fight and the rest of his team refused to continue running.

More information about the campaign against the Iditarod is available on PETA’s website.