Dogs Are Injured and Killed in Grueling Race
For Immediate Release:
March 1, 2011
Contact:
David Perle 757-622-7382
Indianapolis — PETA has just sent an urgent letter to David Simon, chair and CEO of Indianapolis-based retail real-estate company Simon Property Group, urging him to permanently pull its Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall's sponsorship of the cruel Iditarod dogsled race in Alaska. The letter comes on the heels of the decision by the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to cancel its plans to spend a reported $85,000 in order to use the event as a recruiting venue. The TSA made the decision to pull its sponsorship after learning from PETA how dogs are forced to run to the point of injury, exhaustion, and death.
"The Iditarod is 1,150 miles of torment and pain for these dogs," says PETA Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. "Simon Property Group should shop around for a sponsorship opportunity that doesn't injure and kill overworked dogs every year."
The Iditarod is a long, grueling race with documented instances of injuries as well as death from hypothermia, gastric ulcers, and "sled-dog myopathy"—literally being run to death. Typically, dogs are forced to run for many hours with little rest. Their paws become bruised and bloodied and are cut by the ice, and many dogs incur stress fractures or become sick. The Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine published an article about the Iditarod revealing that 61 percent of dogs who were studied exhibited an increased frequency of gastric erosions or ulcers after completing the race. Twenty dogs have died in connection with the race since 2005.
Because of its inherent cruelty, the Iditarod has steadily lost sponsors over the years. Former sponsors include Nestlé, Rite Aid, Panasonic, Safeway, Maxwell House, True Value Hardware, BP Amoco, Sherwin-Williams, Upjohn, Tropicana, Pizza Hut, Costco, Pfizer Pharmacia, and others.
For more information, please click here.