Headquarters!

We made it to the Iditarod Headquarters in Wasillia today!

It was a pretty busy day at the Headquarters.  Mushers were coming in to turn in paperwork and have their vet checks. 

We went in to the headquarters to look at the little museum that was there..... here are some of the highlights:

Official Trophies - the winners get a smaller version of each.  These large ones stay at headquarters and are engraved with each winner's name.

The Old Trophy



The New Trophy - adopted to honor Joe Reddington after his death

Red Lantern

Junior Iditarod



While we were checking out the exhibits, the mushers were filling out paperwork in the back room.  Look who we ran into:

With Ken Anderson

It was so neat to meet the musher we had talked to online in person!  I think we caught him a little off guard, but he was very friendly and more than willing to talk to us for a few minutes!





Jake Berkowitz Signs in for his Second Race

Outside the headquarters things were hopping as the mushers brought their dogs in for vet checks.  The Vets were checking temperatures, drawing blood, sampling urine, checking paws and legs, teeth and ears.... everything from tip of their nose to the tip of their tales.  One musher, Pat Moon, learned that one of his dogs was pregnant so that dog will not be allowed to run.

Waiting for the Vet

Later I asked Angie about how that works.  What happens if you get a dog to vet check and then the dog can't run, are you out of luck?  She says that you usually bring more dogs to the vet check than you actually plan to take on the race.  You then have some extra dogs in case something happens between now and the start of the race.  You don't actually have to make the final decision to the restart.  Whichever dogs you leave Willow with are your dogs for the race!

The Vet Trailer

More Snapshots from Outside:

Ken Anderson's Truck

Ken Anderson (left) has a dog checked by the vet

Sigrid Ekran's Dog Truck

Sigrid Ekran is from Norway.  She lived in Alaska for awhile and ran the Iditarod while she lived here. She now has returned to live in Norway and has been running races there.  This year she is back to run her third race. 

Sigrid and a pup

Here's the coolest thing.... this is her dog box.  The sides close down and the whole thing loads onto the airplane to bring her dogs to the race. Then she just has to rent a truck to drive them around on! 

Here is a picture of it all closed up:

Isn't that soooo cool?

Zoya DeNure's Truck

This might be Mrs. Rizzuto's new favorite musher.  Her name is Zoya DeNure.  She has a kennel where she rescues and rehabilitates sled dogs.  She used to be a fashion model!

Zoya With Her Lead Dogs - they are girls too!

I'm going to stop here for now... I'll have more from the vet checks in the next post!