Since we have been covering the Iditarod for so long, the Junior Dispatch specializes in Iditarod-style fun, just take a look:

TUNDRA: This comic strip hosted by the Junior Dispatch mostly focuses on the antics of arctic animals. You can read it every day here.

PRINCE JAN, ST. BERNARD: This feature tells the story of a dog and his travels from St. Bernard Pass and back again. Along the way, he meets plenty of interesting friends. Read the chapter story here.

PICTURES & BOOKS: Looking for good book about Alaska? A librarian helped us discover five of the best for kids like you. Get the details here.

LITTLE WHITE FOX & HIS ARCTIC FRIENDS: This feature contains multiple short stories about an arctic fox living in Alaska as he searches for food, gets in trouble and has quite a bit of fun. Find his adventures here.

MORE DOGS: While Belevedere isn’t likely to be running in the Iditarod any time soon, the fiesty little pooch is with them in spirit. Read the comic strip here!

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

You have to trust us on this: The Iditarod has some really crazy rules.

And Rule 34 has to be the strangest:

In the event that an edible big game animal, i.e., moose, caribou, buffalo, is killed in defense of life or property, the musher must gut the animal and report the incident to a race official at the next checkpoint. Following teams must help gut the animal when possible. No teams may pass until the animal has been gutted and the musher killing the animal has proceeded. Any other animal killed in defense of life or property must be reported to a race official, but need not be gutted.

This rule is reflecting on just how crazy the Alaskan wilderness can get.

Basically it says that if a moose wanders into your path and stomps some of your dogs, and it looks like it plans on stomping even more dogs, then you probably need to shoot it dead.

Further, the rule says, if you do shoot that moose dead, then you’ve got to cut all of its guts out so it doesn’t get all nasty. Even worse, any other racer who comes across you doing so has to stop and wait until you’re done doing it.

So what is the purpose of this rule? We figure it’s been made to make sure mushers don’t just shoot and kill anything that comes near them — you know, just in case those wild beasts were thinking of stomping on your dogs. By making the gutting of the animal mandatory, the act of killing something becomes time consuming and gives your competitors a chance to catch up to you.

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

Compared to normal races, the Iditarod has kind of a weird rule about how one team of dogs is allowed to pass another team of dogs.

Here’s what the rules officially say (we’ll explain it after):

When one team approaches within fifty (50) feet of another team, the team behind shall have the immediate right of way upon demand. The musher ahead must stop the dogs and hold them to the best of his/her ability for a maximum of one minute or until the other team has passed, whichever occurs first. The passed team must remain behind at least fifteen (15) minutes before demanding the trail.

So what this means is if Bob Smith is in the lead and Jane Jones catches up to him, she can yell up to him “Hey, I wanna pass!” This means poor old Bob has to stop his team, let Jane fly by and then wait another minute to start his team on the trail again. Even when he gets running again and catches back up to Jane, he has to wait 15 minutes before he yells to Jane “Hey, I wanna pass!”

Imagine if this was the rule for NASCAR!

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

According to the official Iditarod race-rules, mushers must stop at least twice in their sprint from Anchorage to Nome.

These stops are mostly to help the mushers’ dogs get a rest after days of pulling a sled along the trail. One of the stops must last 24 hours, the other stop is required to last eight hours.

The eight-hour stop is usually used by the musher (and the dogs) to take a long nap and something warm and fresh to eat. The 24-hour break is much of the same, but also gives them a chance to check over all their gear and dogs.

Of course, a musher can opt to stop and sleep at any time he or she wants along the trail, but doing so doesn’t count as an official “stop,” because stops need to happen at race checkpoints.

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

Dallas Seavey holds his leaders, Diesel, left, and Guiness after he arrived at the finish line to claim victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska, on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Seavey is the youngest musher to win the nearly 1,000-mile race across Alaska. (AP Photo/Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News)

The 2013 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race features a few competitors who have already won the race before.  Their experience on the trail may mean they have what it takes to win again.

They are:

• Dallas Seavey — 2012 champion
• John Baker — 2011 champion
• Lance Mackey — 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 champion
• Jeff King — 1993, 1996, 1998 and 2003 champion
• Mitch Seavey — 2004 champion
• Martin Buser — 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2002 champion

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

According to the Iditarod website, there are 66 competitors in this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. A total of 71 actually signed up for the competition, but five racers have since withdrawn.

Racers are primarily from the United States and Canada, but other countries are represented as well:

• Newton Marshall hails from Jamaica
• Luan Ramos Marques comes from Brazil
• Joar Leifseth Ulsom represents Norway
• Curt Perano calls New Zealand his home
• Mikhail Telpin is from Russia

16 of the remaining racers are female.

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

The Iditarod dog sled race starts in Alaska tomorrow, and the Junior Dispatch will do its best to offer you all the coverage we can on the competition.

In recent years, the race has taken less and less time. Now it takes about 8 or 9 days for the first dog sled to cross the finish line in Nome. The race course is about 1,000 miles from Anchorage to Nome.

As is usual with our Iditarod coverage, we will also offer a fun reading project to go along with the race. This year, we are presenting “Rescue Dog of the High Pass” an adventure story of a boy and his dog works as a rescue team in a wintery mountain range.

Also, Junior Dispatch is presenting its Iditarod Fast-Facts which are quick informational nuggets about the race, the racers and the dogs who make it all happen. Look for those on most weekdays!

Here are a few Fast-Facts to start you off as you learn about the Iditarod:

In this photo from 2012, veterinarian Scott Rosenbloom takes a look at a dog team at the vet check at Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla, Alaska. The ceremonial start for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race is Saturday, March 2, 2013, in Anchorage. (AP Photo/Anchorage Daily News, Mark Lester)

VET CHECKS: Before the race begins and at every checkpoint, the dogs involved in the race are checked by veterinarians for signs of injury, sickness, exhaustion and abuse. The pre-race vet check also includes blood and ECG tests to make sure there’s no disease or irregular heartbeats among the animals.
Each year about 1,000 dogs will be examined before the race even begins.
Check out this video for more about what the vets look for in the dogs.

RULES OF THE GAME: Interested in the exact rules of the race? Well check out this PDF, which explains the right and wrong way to do things, including what absolutely must be on every sled, such as snow shoes, an axe and an emergency GPS tracking beacon.

To even enter the race at all, a musher needs to have proven himself or herself in other, shorter dog sled races first. You also need $3,000 — that’s how much it costs to register for the race.

WHO’S RACING? Read musher profiles on links from this page. Each person has a biography linked to their name. You can learn about their hometown, hobbies, schools they went to and how old they are.

RACE COURSE: This year, the Iditarod is taking the northern route — the actual course alternates between a north rout and a south route.  Originally, the race was 1,049 miles to represent 1,000 miles plus 49 miles because Alaska was the 49th state.

The longest stretch between checkpoints is from Kaltag to Unalakleet, where teams will be running 85 miles on their own. That section is about 2/3rds of the way through the course.

WEATHER: You can monitor the weather on the course here. As of this writing, which is mid-morning in Alaska, the warmest spot on the trail is about 25 degrees. The coldest is -17 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mushers brave the cold in typical winter clothes, but with plenty of layers. They wear heavy jackets, insulated gloves, fur hats, balaclavas, thick socks and anything else they can put on to keep warm.

Dogs wear a lot less, but most get booties to protect their footpads and to keep them warm. They also often wear smocks over their chests and abdomens to help keep in the heat.

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

Naturally, a lot of people are excited to see the first Iditarod racer to cross the line. That musher gets a pile of money, a new car and world-wide fame.

But there is also the “Red Lantern” award for another racer: Whoever finishes the Iditarod in last place earns the famed award.

Make no mistakes, the honor isn’t given to the racer to make fun of them, but it signifies that every musher on the trail has been accounted for and (hopefully) is safe.

Along the same line, every racer who completes the entire race earns a special belt buckle.

Mushers who “scratch,” meaning they opted to give up on the race for a variety of reasons, don’t earn anything.

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.

Huskies are the primary pooch used to pull dog sleds, but not the only ones. In fact there are multiple breeds of husky — Alaskan, Labrador, Mackensie River,  Sakhalin and Siberian.

Other dogs often used in sled racing are:

• Alaskan Malamute: These dogs look a lot like huskies, but they are typically considered stronger, but slower than huskies. That means they are good at pulling heavy loads.
• Canadian Inuit Dog:  These dogs are considered to be one of the rarest breeds of dog in the world. Some experts say the breed’s decline was the direct result of the invention of the snowmobile.
• Chinook: A docile and loving dog breed that traces its lineage back to a 1917 dog named Chinook. They are sometimes trained for search-and-rescue operations.
• Eurohound: A short-haired hybrid dog that mixes husky and pointer bloodlines.
• Greenland Dog: Big, wolf-like dogs that originated in the arctic regions that enjoy a “pack-like” living style.
• Northern Inuit Dog: This young breed of dog was first created in the 1980s and are said to be extremely loyal to their owners and family.
• Samoyed: These fluffy white dogs come from the Lapland regions of Russia and Finland and were once used to herd reindeer.
• Seppala Siberian Sleddog: Medium-sized dogs that are known for their unique disposition: active, merry, and often quite inquisitive.
• Tamaskan Dog: Notable for their wolf-like appearance, Tamaskans are good diggers and excellent competitors.
• Utonagan: Thanks to their German Shepherd heritage, Utonagans are known to be easy to train. Their drive to be members of a pack mean they socialize well with other animals, even cats.

(Okay, so that wasn’t exactly a fast-fact. Sorry.)

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.
 

The original serum run to Nome took about five-and-a-half days because the course was split up among 150 dogs and multiple mushers.

The Iditarod, which commemorates the serum run, takes longer because each team has a limited number of dogs and only one musher to drive them.

The longest time it took for the Iditarod’s first-place winner was in 1974, when it took 20 days and 15 hours.  Since that time, the first-place winners have made better and better time.

In 2011, musher John Baker got his team to Nome in the shortest time ever: 8 days and 19 hours.

View more Iditarod Fast-Facts here.