Sled Dogs

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.

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

Unfortunately, in the film, claims made by Stu Nelson, the Iditarod's chief veterinarian, aren't corrected by anyone giving the facts. He portrays the Iditarod as an event in which dogs get good veterinary care. They don't.

Mushers often blast through checkpoints, so dogs don't get physical examinations. In some cases, dogs who have been at checkpoints for hours have died soon after leaving.

Iditarod veterinarians allow sick and injured dogs to race. In a recent Iditarod, one of Lance Mackey's male dogs ripped out all of his 16 toenails trying to get to a female who was in heat. This type of broken toenail is extremely painful. But veterinarians allowed Mackey to continue to race him. Imagine the agony the dog was forced to endure.

Here's another example: Veterinarians have allowed dogs with kennel cough to race in the Iditarod even though dogs with this disease should be kept warm and given lots of rest. Strenuous exercise can cause lung damage, pneumonia and even death. To make matters worse, kennel cough is a highly contagious disease that normally lasts from 10 to 21 days.

Nelson claimed that 30 percent of the dogs are dropped at checkpoints. That's inaccurate. On average, fifty percent of the dogs are left at checkpoints because they're injured, sick or exhausted.

FACTS: Sled Dog Action Coalition

"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.

Here we have one hour and twenty-two minutes of political grandstanding against a part of American history. The filmmaker finds a rarity in the world of mushing and chooses to exploit it to fit her own personal narrative and distaste for something she has (clearly) little to no knowledge. She attempts to paint an entire subsection of our population with one broad stroke from the same brush. And she failed miserably at it.

To the viewer: don't waste your time with this. You'd actually be better off with reruns of "The Big Bang Theory,"

To the filmmaker: Stick to plants, Fern, because this film is one dog definitely deserved to be put down.