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I’m going to start with a short answer to this question…. … In a nutshell, Arctic dogs are dogs which have been bred over centuries to withstand the cold and harsh conditions in the Arctic regions. There are many types of Arctic dogs, and some of these have the word ‘husky’ in their name. More specifically, some of the Arctic dog breeds are particularly suited to being trained to pull sleds, and these dogs (surprise surprise) are called sled dogs….

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I never knew that sled dogs have been around for nearly 10,000 years! In 2017, on Zhokhov Island in the Eastern Siberian Sea, archaeologists discovered the remains of a domesticated dog which had DNA links to today’s sled dogs. The common ancestry between modern sled dogs and this 9,500 year old Zhokhov dog provides evidence that humans have been breeding dogs since that time. Moreover, the fact that sled artefacts were also present at the same site points to earliest…

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Definitely the Trail came first. Way ahead of the Race. In fact, the history of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race needs to start with the history of the Iditarod Trail on which the race is run. Trails in the region go back thousands of years, long before Europeans settled in Alaska, when native Alaskans travelled along the trails to trade and transport goods. Much later, the Russians developed parts of the trail as supply routes between fur trading posts. The…

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I want to be quite clear about something from the start …. … I am not participating in a dog sled race! I am, however, going to follow a dog sled race by attending the start, the finish and by visiting some checkpoints. The race I will be following is the Iditarod Dog Sled Race. Each year a group of mushers race their dog sled teams from Anchorage to Nome across a trail which is over 1,000 miles long (over…

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