PETA to Iditarod Losers: We’ll Pay You to Become a Snowplow Operator Instead

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Now that the 2022 Iditarod is over, PETA U.S. has reviewed the mushers’ performances—and PETA entities have sent letters to them all, offering to help pay for the cost of training and equipment so that they can embark on new, benign careers, such as snowplow operator, ski instructor, or park ranger, all careers that leave dogs in peace.

“As more and more people reject the idea of a race that forces dogs to run to their deaths, being a musher is as irrelevant as being a VCR repairer,” says PETA U.S. Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA will help mushers kiss the Iditarod goodbye and move into a job no one despises anyone for doing.”

Nearly 250 dogs were pulled off the trail during this year’s race because of exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, forcing the remaining ones to work even harder to pull the mushers. Two dogs went missing, and one—used by rookie musher Sébastien Dos Santos Borges—apparently still has not been found. Another musher, Hugh Neff, was forced to quit after dogs on his team—who were described as “skinny” and were apparently suffering from diarrhea—were deemed unfit to continue. Before the race even started, dogs were attacked and one was killed during training. Since the Iditarod began, more than 150 dogs have died.

The letter to Neff is available here, and similar letters from other PETA entities to the other losing mushers are available upon request. PETA U.S.—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.