Yukon Quest Vet Checks

28 January 2012
5:49 PM

Sunrise at	9:50 AM	in direction	135°	Southeast
Sunset at	4:18 PM	in direction	225°	Southwest

Duration of day: 6 hours, 28 minutes (6 minutes, 36 seconds longer than yesterday)

The State of Alaska has formalized its process for the Yukon Quest accounting of dog transport across borders. I don't think this applies to all races, but I am not sure. Each race has a mandatory vet check before the race so it's possible that the State of Alaska is recording details of all race teams for the prevention of disease and doing that because of how many animals are transported in close quarters. But, since we don't have to do this type of paper work for dog shows unless we travel by plane or into Canada, I assume all of this record keeping is because the animals are crossing international borders.

At a minimum, each team crosses the border twice. Those living in Canada transport dogs to the start in Fairbanks and then across the border between Eagle, Alaska and Dawson City, YK. When associated with the race, the race organizers must keep clear documentation on each animal and the musher keeps one copy in the sled while handlers keep one in the truck.

The drawback of this process is that it is manual. Although I expected to scribe for the vet while the vet was doing a doggy physical, I actually spent my day writing out the following details for each dog member of a racing team:
A typical entry would be:

Species	Color/Breed	Age	Sex	Name	Microchip #	Rabies Manufacturer	Rabies Vaccine Serial #	Date of Rabies Vaccination	Other Vaccinations
K9	Gray/white	4	M	Spooky		Merial	121556A	10/21/2009	DH₂PP

The order of the columns is exactly as I printed them, which made no sense to me since the first thing anyone ever enters on a scrap of information for the dog is the name, then sex, and finally age. I found I often was entering details about the dog from right to left since that was the order in which I found information.

Assistant Director, Frog, and volunteers coping with paper work

There were 18 teams that came in for the vet check, most with 16 dogs to a team ... my arm and shoulder hurt from writing in cramped spaces, often very rapidly while needing it to be legible. But I got to meet more Alaskan mushers I've read about during races: Lance Mackey ( 4 time Iditarod champion and only racer to win both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod in the same year), Jake Berkowitz (up-and-comer), Kristy Berington (another up-and-comer), Trent Herbst (teacher turned musher) and Kurt Reich from Colorado. Others I have had the opportunity to meet before also were there: Mike and Sue Ellis (fastest Siberian team), Brent Sass (top YQ contender), and the Russian/Norwegian trio that - as I've said before - are adding some interest to the race.

Mike Ellis with one of his cherished Siberian Huskies

The dog trucks were driven inside the building and dogs loaded out of their individual dog transport kennels onto the vet table. Once that was complete, they were weighed and put back into the truck. There was constant mop clean up after trucks left to keep it sanitary and a pleasant work place.