Posted on 03/01/2007 8:43:58 PM PST by Doginator
Guest columnist: Teacher shouldn't promote cruel race on school time
By MARGERY GLICKMAN guest columnist March 1, 2007
When teachers waste children's time and Florida tax dollars promoting their personal agendas, everyone loses. This practice is especially outrageous when teachers endorse activities that wouldn't be legal in the state. That's what happens when Florida teachers promote the Iditarod, an Alaskan dog sled race that begins Saturday. Because the Iditarod has a well-documented history of dog deaths, illnesses and injuries, the race couldn't be legally held in Florida.
The race would violate our animal-cruelty law, which prohibits overworking animals. Promoting the Iditarod, as Kim Slade does at Thompson Elementary School in Indian River County, also violates Florida's Humane Education Law that requires teachers to teach kindness towards animals. Slade, a math and science teacher, was named the 2007 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail. To obtain this position, she agreed to promote the race for a year and promised to spend at least 3 1/2 weeks in Alaska this February and March. That's approximately when she was there in 2006. Slade is again in Alaska while the FCATs are administered.
How much did Slade's students learn in 2006 when she was focused on completing the requirements necessary to be named the 2007 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail? The 2006 math and science FCAT results for her school showed that 54 percent of students in grades three and five weren't proficient in math, and 75 percent of fifth-graders weren't proficient in science. With terrible scores like these, Slade should be helping her students learn instead of jetting off to Alaska or promoting the Iditarod.
Before allowing Slade to hype the Iditarod, her school district should have checked the facts. Surely, if officials knew the grim reality, they wouldn't be paying Slade to portray animal abusers as heroes.
Here's the truth. In the Iditarod, dogs race 1,150 miles, the approximate distance between Vero Beach and Madison, Wis., over a grueling terrain in eight to 16 days. What happens to the dogs during the Iditarod includes death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, ruptured discs, viral diseases, pneumonia, torn muscles and tendons and sprains. There is no accounting of how many dogs die in training or after each Iditarod.
At least 130 dogs have died in the race. Many dogs that died in the Iditarod had undiagnosed stomach ulcers. Dogs died from blood loss due to ulcers, while others regurgitated and then inhaled their own acidic stomach contents, which caused them to choke to death. According to the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, 61 percent of the dogs that finish the Iditarod have ulcers, versus zero percent pre-race.
On average, 52 percent of the dogs that start the race don't make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 81 percent of the dogs that finish the race have lung damage. Iditarod personnel encourage mushers to race diseased dogs. Instead of removing sick dogs from the race, veterinarians frequently give them massive doses of antibiotics to keep them running. Mushers often breeze through checkpoints in less than 5 minutes, making it impossible for vets to give the dogs physical exams or even the briefest visual checks.
The Iditarod, with its dismal report card, has no place being hyped in Florida's schools.
Glickman, a retired teacher, is the director of the Sled Dog Action Coalition. She lives in Miami.
OPPOSING VIEW? WE TRIED, BUT ...
Kim Slade, through the Indian River County School District, and the director for Iditarod and in charge of the Wells Fargo Teacher on the Trail program, declined an offer to write an opposing view.
WARNING: You’ll want a good stiff drink first.
Awwww! What beautiful kitties! Thanks.
Oh the Iditarod will be cool, in fact bet it will be damn COLD!
Ping. {Giggle}
That's gonna leave a mark.
Do you even know why they started the Iditarod? I've seen plenty of people drop out of the race because of their dogs. You need to go mush elsewhere ....
Are those Russian Blues? They're beautiful!
Get a sled dog and try to KEEP IT FROM RUNNING!!!!!!!
IBTZ.
To make matters worse, I got a note from the original source of the picture saying I was costing them bandwidth.
So I just copied the picture to photobucket, and didn't ask the original source. :-(
Hey there, my favorite deployed FReeperette...how's it going way out there?
Do you know of our lovable hairy friends from the land of Ice and snow?
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Viking Kitty/ZOT ping list!. . . don't be shy.
Everyday I wake up in this world just adds to the list, the number of people I'd love to smash into the ground.
I had a suspicion when I was growing up that teachers were all idiots.
Now I'm convinced of it.
so, how do you pull a sled in sunny Florida?
or is it Floriduh?
gotta go check to see if my dog has finished vaccuming..
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