Iditarod makes the right call on drug testing

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, is the old saying. In the case of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, it should be, what’s good for the dog is good for the musher.

Until now, the dogs were the only competitors tested.

Three-time champion Lance Mackey admitted to a reporter he smoked a little dope along the trail, but maintains it didn’t give him an advantage. That would seem to be the case since marijuana tends to make users mellow and that certainly wouldn’t be an advantage if you’re trying to stay upright on a sled in the middle of the frozen nowhere.

Other drugs, though, might give an advantage. Stimulants in particular could keep a musher up when he normally would be resting. And that’s where this new rule could help. If a musher is high on a drug that lets him keep going, he could be harming the dogs.

PETA’s got enough to complain about regarding how well the dogs are treated without getting wind of some rogue musher out there on steroids pushing dogs past their physical limits.

So this is a positive step for a race that works hard to have a clean image.

One other initiative might make the race better: more stringent entry requirements for rookie mushers. Presently, first-timers have to have run the Yukon Quest or finish in the top 75 percent of two other sanctioned races that add up to at least 500 miles.

Granted, running dogs 250 miles is no walk in the park, but it doesn’t compare to running 1,100 miles from here to Nome where help can be hard to find when a blizzard roars though, as some found out last year. And those shorter races don’t include the Dalzell Gorge where even veteran mushers sometimes falter.

There needs to be some kind of mentoring system so rookies can learn from mushers who have tackled the Iditarod Trail and have seen all it can deliver. They can — and have — loan veteran dogs to help the beginners. That’s what Mackey is doing this year. He’s taken in a musher from Jamaica, of all places, to help get him get ready. Not that he’s a beginner. Newton Marshall ran the Yukon Quest last year under the tutelage of veteran Hans Gatt, three-time winner of that race.

That’s as it should be to avoid a tragedy for humans and dogs.