With a few days likely left in the Iditarod, a frontrunner gets a time penalty

With days likely left in the sled dog race, one of the frontrunners has been given a 2-hour time penalty after officials deemed he didn’t sufficiently gut a moose that got tangled with his dog team.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Dozens of mushers and hundreds of their dogs have been trekking across Alaska for a week now. This is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and they are vying to be the first to put a thousand miles of trail behind them on the way from Anchorage to Nome. Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove has been traveling along with them and has this report.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOGS BARKING)

CASEY GROVE, BYLINE: The 38 sled dog teams in this year’s Iditarod began with a ceremonial run through Anchorage, then the official start north of the city in Willow when the race clock started ticking one week ago.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Three, two, one, go.

GROVE: And then they’re off, heading to the northwest almost as far as you can go in the United States. The race harkens back thousands of years to when dog-drawn sleds were a crucial mode of transportation for Alaska’s indigenous people and, later, gold miners. Today, competitive long-distance dog mushing has evolved into an intricate science of canine genetics, dog care and wilderness travel in one of the harshest environments on Earth. There are also safeguards in races like the Iditarod, including veterinarians at checkpoints and emergency beacons that each musher carries. At every stop, the mushers’ main focus is on the dogs – feeding them, massaging their muscles and rubbing foot ointment into their paws.

Along with frigid temperatures and precarious terrain, though, Iditarod teams must also be prepared to face Alaska’s wildlife, namely moose that get as big as 1,500 pounds and can stomp a musher or their dogs to death. Some mushers carry handguns for just such an encounter, and five-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey was forced to use his only about 100 miles into the…