Dogsled Racing
Dogs
Dogsled Racing
Dogsled racing is a winter
dog sport involving the timed competition of teams of
sleddogs that pull a
sled,
on the runners of which the dog driver or musher stands. The team
completing the marked course in the shortest time is adjudged the
winner.
Generally the teams start one after another in equal time intervals,
competing against the clock rather than directly against one another. This is
due to logistic considerations of getting teams of from 3 to 24 excited sleddogs
to the starting line for a clean timed start. Mass starts where all of the dog
teams start together at the sound of a starting gun etc. are very popular in
many parts of Canada. A mass start, thought to be mass confusion by those who
have never experienced the thrill is still the start method preferred by the
members of Ma-Mow-We-Tak, a Canadian sled dog association, according to a poll
taken in the spring of 2005. Dogsled races may be sprint races over
relatively short distances of 4 to 25 miles, mid-distance races from 20
to 200 miles, or long-distance races of 200 to over 1000 miles. Sprint
races are frequently two or three-day events with heats run on successive days
with the same dogs over the same course. Mid-distance races are either heat
races of 20 to 80 miles per day, or continuous races of 100 to 200
miles usually. (These categories are informal and may overlap to a certain
extent.)
Other modes of dogsled racing include freight races, in which a
specified weight per dog
is carried in the sled, and stage races, in which participants run a
different course each day, usually from a central staging location.
Races are categorised not only by distance, but by the maximum number of dogs
allowed in each team. The most usual categories are three-dog, six-dog, and 12
dogs or more (called open or unlimited); some races have four-dog, eight-dog
and/or ten-dog classes instead of three and six.
Racing sleddogs wear individual
harnesses
to which individual tuglines are snapped, pulling from a loop near the
root of the tail. The dogs are hooked in pairs, their tuglines being attached in
turn to a central gangline. The lines usually include short necklines
snapped to each dog’s collar, just to keep the dogs in proper position. It is
unusual ever to see more than 22 dogs hooked at once in a racing team, and that
number is usually seen only on the first day of the most highly competitive
sprint events. Dogs may be omitted from the teams on subsequent days, but none
may be added. Many other rules apply, most of which have been in effect since
the beginning of organised dogsled racing in the city of
Nome,
Alaska, in 1908.
See also:
mushing,
carting
External links
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