Bright Coats

Colors in the checkpoint were brighter than usual beneath the brilliant blue McGrath Sky. There was a pile of “hot” pink booties lying beside William Pinkham’s resting team. Sam White’s dogs slept peacefully under neon pink and yellow coats. Colleen Robertia’s dogs snoozed under blankets made of cozy fleece decorated with Garfield like cats. Bright colors are optional but the coats and booties are standard equipment on the trail.

Coats can be used to either cool or help the dogs retain heat. On a bright sunny warm day, some dogs will wear light colored coats to help reflect the warmth of the sun. The Norwegian teams running in the 2006 were easy to spot from the air as they wore yellow coats while running for nearly the whole distance. On cold days, dogs may wear darker coats to retain heat. Upon arrival at a rest stop, the dogs are given straw and if it’s cold, mushers will dress the dogs in coats. Wearing coats or being covered while sleeping helps to decrease calories burned while resting thereby conserving energy and maintaining weight. Both are important factors in marathon events run in cold weather like the Iditarod. It’s not unusual to see some dogs covered and a few uncovered on the same sleeping team. Mushers must know their dogs, know their coats and understand each dog’s metabolic rate to make the decision to cover or not to cover.

Brightest Booties on the Trail

Dogs don’t wear booties in Iditarod to keep their feet warm. Their feet stay warm because they have tough epithelial tissue on their paw pads, a very high metabolic rate, excellent circulation in their extremities and they are able to fold their feet under their bodies when sleeping. Dogs wear booties to protect their feet from abrasions as trail snow can be very sharp and crystalline. They also wear booties to prevent the build up of icy balls between their toes. Booties last approximately 100 miles unless they become wet. It’s quite a major task to un-bootie and re-bootie at each checkpoint.  For the most part, mushers will use booties, however in warm years, mushers may choose to run without booties to allow the dogs to cool themselves down through their foot pads.

Watching these mushers efficiently tend to and fuss over their dogs is amazing. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether the dogs realize they have bright booties, pretty blankets or colorful coats but it contributes to the spirit of the mushers and character of the checkpoints. Robertia says that she didn’t choose the cozy fleece for the printed cats – it was just on sale.

Undercover Dogs