PETA Global 2019 Issue 3

Saved! The One Who Got Away Musher John Baker gave Maggie to PETA’s eyewitness after deciding that she wasn’t “built” to race.

A dog named Captain had infected neck wounds that smelled like rotting flesh. A worker squeezed out the pus, ripped tissue out of the wounds, and then sprayed them with a fungicide – but did not seek proper veterinary care. Another dog was dragged to her death after a team broke free from a sled. Seavey’s son Dallas was implicated in a dog-doping scandal, and a whistleblower report alleged that he also withheld care from injured, sick, and dying dogs. Maggie had been pulling on her short chain for so long, it had rubbed her neck raw and injured her vocal cords. PETA placed her with a loving family who say they plan to give her “a long, long life of love and happiness.” and annual meeting as well as e-mails from more than 205,000 PETA supporters – Coca-Cola withdrew its sponsorship of the Iditarod. But others, including Millennium Hotels and Resorts, still support the deadly spectacle. Please visit PETA.org/Millennium to urge the hotel chain to pull its funding from the race. Please, never take a dog-sled ride or buy a tour package or excursion that includes visits to dog kennels, and share PETA’s eyewitness video with everyone you know. Take Action Now Following months of pressure from PETA – including protests outside its headquarters

Iditarod investigation photos: © PETA • Torn paper: © iStock.com/yasinguneysu • Background: © iStock.com/nikkytok

W hile working at a facility owned by former Iditarod champion John Baker and musher Katherine Keith – who had two dogs perish during past Iditarod races – a PETA investigator caught Baker on tape describing tying dogs to a moving Jeep and forcing them to run (or be run over). One exhausted dog became tangled up, and he dragged her along the ice, saying it would “teach her” to “reconsider slowing” when she was tired. When another paused to defecate, he refused to brake, saying that it’s “better to have a dead dog” than one who “slows down the team.” This past winter, a PETA eyewitness worked at two mushing operations in Alaska and found that dogs were denied basic veterinary care for their injuries and kept chained in below-zero temperatures and biting winds to ramshackle boxes open to the elements, many containing nothing more than a wisp of straw. At Baker and Keith’s kennel, some of the rundown wooden boxes had collapsed, leaving the dogs without respite from wind chills as low as –19°F (–28°C). They were fed a “stew” of rotten meat that was sometimes too foul to eat, and many dogs’ ribs and hip bones were clearly visible through their skin. Snickers, the Forgotten Champion Snickers, one of Baker’s lead dogs in 2011 when he won the Iditarod, was suffering from chronic arthritis and limping badly. Rather than providing her with veterinary care, he chained her outside by the frozen sea, alone and whimpering. The 11-year-old dog had no shelter at all until PETA’s eyewitness built one for her. Baker was caught on tape admitting that she had

Snickers

arthritis even when she ran the Iditarod and that she was “in a lot of pain.” He said that he had not put her out of her misery because “I just don’t have a good place to bury her.” ‘Kick Them in the Balls’ At three-time Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey’s yard, PETA’s eyewitness found scores of dogs chained to plastic barrels. Some had run in circles for so long that their paw pads were raw and bleeding. Even so, they were forced to run day after day. One worker harnessed incompatible dogs next to each other and said that she would “kick them in the balls” if they fought. After one training run, she boasted, “I just kicked [a dog] in his anus.”

‘A DEAD DOG’S BETTER THAN A SLOW ONE,’ Says Iditarod Musher

PETA placed this ad featuring Birch, who could only drag herself across the icy ground after sustaining a crippling spinal cord injury, on buses in Anchorage.

Global 23

22 COLD AS ICE