Hello friends,

A musher’s cooker and dog food ingredients [Photo Credit: Terrie Hanke]

Preparations are underway for the 2020 Iditarod. The humans have already prepared their Drop Bags and sent them to Anchorage where they will be sorted by checkpoint and flown out on the trail.  Rules #47 & 48 describe what can and can’t be shipped in the bags. Bags include personal gear and equipment for the mushers but, most importantly, they include food for the canine athletes. Along with a dried kibble mix, we like to snack on meat and salmon. As racing dogs, we need to consume about 12,000 calories per day! Awooooo! That’s about the same as 24 Big Macs.

Volunteers bag, sort and stack over 1200 bales of straw and hay to be sent out to the 22 checkpoints on the Iditarod trail. The straw is used as beds for the dogs as they rest.

One thing our humans don’t have to pack is straw. The straw is provided by the Iditarod Trail Committee (ITC) at each checkpoint. Volunteers have been busy getting the straw together for the Iditarod Air Force to fly to checkpoints. When we get to a checkpoint our musher will grab a bale of straw and spread a little patch of it for each of us. I know it sounds scratchy to humans, but we LOVE to curl into it and tuck our noses into our long tails for a nap.

Kelli wants to know what humans eat on the trail. Most mushers will freeze meals such as Mac & Cheese or lasagne into vacuum sealed bags to add to the cooking pot (mandatory item). Some checkpoints offer food for mushers – the pies in Takotna or the moose burgers in Unalakleet are not to be missed.

Keep your questions coming. E-mail me at askzumadog@gmail.com.

Tail wags,

Zuma