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From: Herb
Date: 9/29/00
Time: 10:09:10 PM
Remote Name: 12.21.208.44
FYI: Debbie may be a lot of things, but she's NOT stupid. To my knowledge - and I live with her, so I think I'd have heard - she has never said that running the Iditarod was "easy"... And the facts are that she has been fortunate enough to have been given some extraordinarily good dogs. The first four had already "made the cut" for an Iditarod team that was supposed to run in 2001 [the musher dies which (I think) disqualifies him from running]. We received four others from Judy Merritt. Three of them were simply too young to run the Iditarod this year; the fourth would fight Judy's other males and she didn't have time to correct the problem. We've purchased the remaining dogs that we're currently training. [Yes, we have received dogs that are unsuitable to the task - we're looking for new homes for four of them right now.] When Debbie and I first read the article in the ADN, our response was NOT "Give them to me!", it was "We could probably help..." to house them over the winter until - hopefully - the early salmon runs came in so that their owners could reclaim them. But IMHO even had it been "Give them to me!", it would still have been preferable to killing the dogs. ... and let's face it. The Iditarod is NOT the same grueling trek that Emmitt Peters turned from a glorified camping trip into a real race. It IS easier than it was back then. Fedor Konyukhov completed it after just a couple of months of training; Debbie is taking TWO YEARS to do the same thing. Fedor's goal was simply to complete the race; Debbie's is to break into the top 30. If you were planning to run the Iditarod for the first time, would you set a goal of getting the red lantern? or to be competitive? Personally, I'd set my goals higher ...