No, not the Gary Paulsen book of the same title (although it is a good one, if not funny like Wood Song).
This is an actual dog song I stumbled upon on MySpace. I can't remember how I became friends with the fellow who wrote and sings it, but I was clicking along yesterday, hit his profile, and it began to play. I stopped clicking...frozen...listening. (If you aren't a dog person don't bother.)
But if you are you will get it...and it will get you I promise.
The girls got it when I played it for them when they came home from school last night. (Mike got some big hugs I can tell you.) The only way I could figure out to link to it is to put it on my MySpace page....so go there, click on the music player and listen to "Stay," by Joe Hash.
It is the perfect anthem for all the old dogs out there, past and present, and all the dog folks who love them.
***(There are some fine dogs whose folks have links over in the side bar, such as Feather and Flounder, Lucky,
Shasta, Cubby, Sugar, Fat Buddy
plus
Dog blogs, blogs with dogs,
this is by no means all the dogs and dog folks, but you get the idea)
Great song. Of course now I'm sitting here blubbering like an idiot :)
ReplyDeleteThey can surely pull at your heartstrings. Thanks for the song.
ReplyDeleteOK you've done it. I have tears running down my cheeks and my dogs won't understand why they are getting big hugs and treats.
ReplyDeleteStay...
That's a beautiful and moving song. Although I don't have a dog, I have lived with animals all my life, and I've said goodbye to some.
ReplyDeleteFlo, that is just how it hit me
ReplyDeleteJoni, indeed, I know you lost your dog not so long ago and I thought of you
Jan, sorry about that
NW, they get you don't they?
Although Gary Paulson made the Iditarod seem humerous in his book Woodsong, the race is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org .
ReplyDeleteHere's a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race's early years.
Causes of death have included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. "Sudden death" and "external myopathy," a fatal condition in which a dog's muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson's dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
"They've had the hell beaten out of them." "You don't just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.' They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying." -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno's column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, "I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that "‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.'" "Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective...A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective." "It is a common training device in use among dog mushers...A whip is a very humane training tool."
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in "culling" or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. "On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don't pull are dragged to death in harnesses....." wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska's Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, "He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death."
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn't anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals' best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
Sled dog action...go away!
ReplyDeleteI like sled dog racing, but more importantly sled dogs like racing...been to the races personally, seen the dogs, ran my own dogs on a toboggan...dogs love to run with their owner on a sled behind them.
For every transgression there are thousands of well cared for, happy dogs. Just as every foot ball player isn't Michael Vick, every musher isn't Rick Swenson. Just go away and spam somebody else.
I'm going outside to hang out with Flounder and Feather on the porch now.
ReplyDeleteThat's all I'm sayin'.
M. I'm sitting here trying not to sob out loud. Dang.
ReplyDeleteYou say you know the guy who wrote this? Dang.
I'm still blubbering, but needed to say that that picture of Mike has me blubbering even more.
ReplyDeleteFC, I knew you would get it for sure, what with those wonderful old dogs of yours.
ReplyDeleteHi cathy, I can still hardly listen to it, it gets to me so much. I only know the guy through MySpace, where I enjoy finding aspiring musicians whose music I enjoy. I am not sure how I stumbled upon him, but he is very talented I think.
Mike hates the camera, so he was thinking about leaving off playing border collie soccer to go hide. He doesn't play much any more because he really can't see his toys...poor old guy.