Glad I could share. 😉

I wondered about the Quest’s system. The dogs have to be vet checked before the race, and several times within the race. Hugh and the vets all missed the problem until the dog died. If it was obvious at all, Hugh has a kennel and would have selected another dog if Boppy wasn’t up to speed. It’s like the Dallas Seavey drug accusation, it doesn’t make sense when you step back to look at it.

You might want to read Blair Braverman And Her ‘Ugly Dogs’ Prepare For Her First Iditarod.

I did read an article somewhere that an outside veterinarian did a necropsy and had a differing opinion than the Quest veterinarian, but they would not allow an outside vet to give an opinion at the hearing or whatever they called it. There may be more to the story, or there may not.

It just seems odd that if the dog was in that bad shape, one of the vets didn’t notice it before the dog died. He didn’t get that way overnight. Assuming that they are correct and Neff is negligent, the dog was halfway through the race. Didn’t one of the vets see that the dog was in distress?

Yeah, it’s really sad.

Hugh is having a major rough patch. He is on a suspension from sled dog racing after one of his dogs died on last year’s Quest. The vets felt he should have noticed that Boppy, the dog who died, was in bad shape. The proximate cause of death was aspiration, but the dog was suffering from gastric ulcers and had lost a lost of weight during the race. The judgment was a lack of proper dog care.

Now he has to deal with the loss of one of his main dogs for many years. Sad.

This is the hardest part of having animals.