Jason Campeau’s team wearing bright booties

Many students and classes have reached out asking about those “shoes” on the dogs’ feet. Here’s some information to help you out!

The little shoe-like slippers that dogs wear on their feet are called booties. In order to accommodate all dogs, booties come in small, medium, and large sizes. Although you will see some mushers use the same colored booties for their entire team, many mushers use different colors to help distinguish the various sizes.

The booties are made from a material called Cordura 330– a lightweight, flexible, nylon material. They are held on by a Velcro strap; however, booties do occasionally slip off and if you’re lucky, you can spot one on the ground and end up with a cool souvenir.

People often think that the booties are primarily used to keep the dogs’ feet warm. Whereas booties do help with insulation, they are most importantly used for protection. If wet snow collects between their toes, it can freeze, expand, and ultimately be uncomfortable for the dogs. Booties protect their feet and help keep them safe.

Throughout the race, mushers will use anywhere between 1,500 – 3,000 booties! Some will even use more than that. They routinely exchange used ones with new ones because booties can get worn down quickly. If you can imagine, between training and other races, mushers use thousands of booties over the course of a year.

Hopefully this information helps in shedding some light on booties.

***Teachers*** Here’s some math problems related to booties:

1. Musher Michael started out with 8 booties. His friend gave him 6 more booties. How many booties does Musher Michael have?

2. Aliy left the checkpoint with 22 unused booties. When she reached the next checkpoint, she had 7 unused booties. How many booties did Aliy use between the checkpoints?

3. Seth has $154.00. The booties Seth needs to purchase cost .88 cents each. Seth decided to spend all of his money on booties. How many booties did Seth end up purchasing?

4. Kristen purchased 4,500 booties. The booties were .72 cents each. In total, how much money did Kristen spend?

5. Look at the following chart and then answer the questions that follow:

5 a. Including all the mushers, how many booties were used?

5 b. Including all the mushers, how much money was spent?

5 c. Which musher spent the least amount of money per each bootie?