Sled Dog Races Part 2
Continuing my discussion on the types of dog sled races I will now introduce Stage Racing and Open Class racing. Stage Race: These are races that are up to a week long with a stage ran every day from as short as a few mile sprint to a 50-60 mile mountain stage. The race is setup to be very friendly to dogs and the people involved as well. Every team will have a pool of dogs from which they may draw a maximum number of dogs to compete each day. For example many races will have a 16 dog pool size with no more than 12 dogs being run any given day. It is up to the racer to determine which dogs to run on each stage, when to rest dogs, and to possibly hold dogs in reserve and keep them as fresh as possible to use at the ideal time. Stage races usually travel from town to town in an almost Festival like atmosphere. Spectators can get up close with the dogs and racers are able to rest properly in a hotel every night. These races have changed over th...