Sled Dogs

Totally inaccurate...the other 99% of mushers beg to differ.

While the film starts out nicely enough, it quickly descends into lies. Many are lies of omission by not presenting all the information available. The information on Starz which aired the film states: "a profile of what happens at sled dog operations after the Iditarod ends and the tourists go home." The only kennel in the movie that was used in Iditarod is of a rookie musher. He doesn't own that kennel, an Iditarod champion does. It is not a touring kennel. Their attempt to make the rookie look bad failed. His dogs came across the finish line in Nome with tails wagging and heads held high.

The attempt to portray Krabloonik in Colorado was so mixed up in it's messages. I have been to the kennel as recently as October of 2017. Under new management, it is wonderfully run. I saw dogs as happy as can be. The film claims they are tied to a chain for life. Not true. They get off those chains every day to run in the several fenced acres there. In winter, they are running down hill giving tourists rides in a sled. For sled dogs, this place is golden. The former owner may have had problems. But the film claims the current owner worked for him, so they must be bad as well. That too is untrue. They were there a few weeks before all the legal troubles began. They bought the kennel, at an outrageous price, to save the dogs. Dan MacEachen died, probably because of all the stress this whole event caused.

As for the situation in Whistler, BC that came as a shock to all mushers. The mushing community is always prepared to help fellow mushers in need. No one knew the kennel was in trouble. We all are very sad over that situation.

There are many more things I could add but will not go into a lengthy review. I have 8 pages of notes from the movie. All the "experts" presented on tethering dogs could easily have been refuted by other studies. Do your homework folks.

One last comment, near the end of the movie is video of dead dogs found in a conex trailer in Willow, Alaska. Of course, they never say who this belonged to and where it is. Of course not, because it didn't belong to a musher. I know this for a fact as I lived in Willow at the time and know the person who owned the trailer. I attended his trial for dog abuse. He was a hoarder who thought he could make money breeding dogs and selling puppies. He couldn't. No one does. If you think mushers make money off racing dogs, you are mistaken. Any money won at a race, immediately goes back into a kennel.

So, Fern thinks she has made a movie that will shut down the Iditarod and/or touring kennels. She hasn't. She has only made a work that proves she does not deserve the title director or documentarian. I say this with certainly as a documentary film maker myself. I have worked in television production since 1971 and have owned a sled dog team since then as well.

Great editing, they managed to edit out the truth and focus on one bad kennel amongst thousands and made it seem every kennel is like that. Worse yet, they had to lie, alter and edit clips as well as make things up to make their point. In other words, no point. Every musher I know is against what happened at Whistler. No musher I know (hundreds of them) acts anything like Whistler.

Focusing on 1 bad kennel to try to lead you to believe every kennel is like that is like focusing 1 case of child abuse and leading others to believe YOU are a child abuser because of that totally unrelated case. I can't believe this pack of lies even got funded.

"Omission of facts", "yellow journalism", "political grandstanding", Wow looks like several people have their panties in a bunch over this film. I'm going to take a guess that all of these 1 star, hate filled reviews are from people whose livelihood may be affected by the truth of this film.

This film isn't perfect, hence my six point score. But I cannot brush this aside as a "hack piece" attempting to paint the dog sledding industry in a bad light. There is simply too much truth in this movie that cannot be denied. Throughout my life every time I have seen pictures, or videos, or news stories about dog sledding I have seen the same images - many dogs in a yard chained to a stake in the ground with only a 3-8 foot long chain. That is cruelty. Anyone who thinks that such treatment is not cruelty should put a tight dog collar on their neck and chain themselves to a pole in one of these sled dog yards for one week. You cannot come off the chain at all for that week, and you will be provided water and food once a day just as the dogs get in the 7-8 months there isn't snow on the ground and they are left in the yards restrained 24/7. After your week on the chain then try to tell me or anyone else that such treatment is not cruelty.

Anyone can go to YouTube and search "dog sledding operations" and you will find many videos that show dogs in these dog sled kennels chained to posts exactly as described above. If this movie only represents two bad kennels, why can't I find any videos on YouTube showing dog sledding operations where the dogs are treated humanely and decently?

Finally, I have always had the skill of being able to read canine body language. Dogs do most of their communication via body language. I could have watched this movie with the audio muted and I would have come away with the same opinion. The body language of the dogs tells me everything I need to know; the dogs shown at the checkpoints during the Iditarod, the dogs at both Windrift and Krabloonik Kennels, and especially the scenes with the puppies starting their training at Windrift.

Dog sledding as a business is cruelty. If the Iditarod is to continue, it should respect the athlete dogs that participate and force the teams to use multiple sub teams that are relayed during the race so that no dog has to run in excess of 100 miles a day for ten or more days. I can only hope that this film gets a network platform to be seen so that more voices can be heard in the opposition to this treatment of sled dogs.

This movie posits itself as a documentary but fails because of the many lies that are the results of omission by concealing information or juxtaposing sensational footage with a clip of an Iditarod musher to get the viewer to draw the false conclusion that they are related. The producer deliberately misled one of the mushers who is filmed in order to get the footage she then used in to suggest by innuendo that his dogs -- happy at the end of the Iditarod -- were somehow mistreated. She filmed, without my neighbors knowledge or consent, a musher working out of his kennel as well.

I had to chuckle at the review which claims the Iditarod vet checks are of no value. Clearly, this was written by a person who has never been through an Iditarod vet check and has never raced the Iditarod The dogs are extensively screened with blood work and EKGs prior to the race; dogs that have issues are not allowed to race. At the checkpoints, vets look over the dogs. These are dogs, who by the time they reach the start of Iditarod, typically have 2,000 to 3,000 miles on them that season so they are healthy athletes. Most humans don't get this type of care.

So, let's talk about the sled dog world that I know through my friends and neighbors. The dogs get excellent quality food (high quality kibble, meat, fat, fish etc.), they get daily exercise, and they love to run and pull the sled.

Most parents love their kids but there are some bad parents -- that does not mean that there should be no children. The same is true of dog owners and mushers: most love their dogs and take excellent care of them. The film shows some bad dog owners and mushers and then through innuendo and juxtaposition suggests that most sled dogs are generally neglected or mistreated. So, this film is just a 21st century example of yellow journalism.