Libby Here!
What is the average age of the dogs? Are they retired after a certain age? These are questions that a lot of you have asked.
Well, students, do you think I’m going to tell you my age? Some of us don’t like to tell those details, (hee hee!)
A musher doesn’t always tell us how old a dog on their team is but here is information to keep in mind.
Dogs can run in the race as soon as they are trained to do so, which means that there are young dogs on the trail. Dogs keep running in a musher’s team as long as they are healthy and as long as they still love to race. That means there are ‘old’ experienced dogs on the trail. It also means that mushers can have a mixture of young dogs (2 or 3 years old) and older dogs (about age 4 -8) on the team.
Often some of the dogs on a team have been in Iditarod before, so some of the dogs have the Iditarod Trail experience. Like our mushers, we have veteran and rookie dogs on musher’s teams. (Veterans= those that have done this before, rookies= those doing it for the first time) Sometimes a musher runs all young dogs, who have not run in Iditarod before as part of training a future team. When a musher chooses the dogs for the team, the dogs that are the healthiest and the most well trained make the team. The team is put together to match or to go along with the musher’s goals.
Like with humans, canines retire, too. Retirement comes at the age that best meets that individual dog. Often retired dogs live out the rest of their lives as family pets or get to roam in the musher’s kennel as a retired lead dog of the kennel. I know of some mushers who have special areas in their kennels for the retired dogs. Retired dogs often live for many, many years, most likely always remembering how awesome it was to run with their musher.
To sum up the question, when a musher picks the dogs for the team, the age of the dog is not the main factor. It isn’t about age, it is more about healthy well trained dogs. It is about looking at the experiences the dogs have had during training. It is about past race experience. It is about looking at the traits of the dogs. It is about a musher picking the dogs that best meet the goals the musher has for the race.
Just spinning some de’tails’!
Libby
