A Dog's Life

Who doesn't love a good dog story? Treat your booktalk listeners to a fascinating one in The Great Serum Race: Blazing the Iditarod Trail (Walker, 2002), written by Debbie S. Miller and illustrated by Jon Van Zyle. The city of Nome, AK, was struck by an outbreak of diphtheria in 1925. Children were dying from the disease. And the closest supply of serum was miles away, in Anchorage. But all routes in and out of Nome were impassible in January—except by dogsled. Bring on the four-legged heroes!

Alaskans organized a relay of dogsled teams to bring the serum to Nome from the nearest railroad station, 675 miles away. Most of the teams covered up to 30 miles a day. But many stopped because of sheer exhaustion, and four dogs died and several were permanently injured from the 50-degree-below-zero temperatures.

Two lead dogs, Togo and Balto, defied all odds and went the entire distance. Togo led his team more than 260 miles across thin ice and through treacherous snowdrifts, while his owner, Leonhard Seppala, carried the precious serum, wrapped up to keep it as warm as possible. This thrilling event is also detailed in the beautifully illustrated book Togo (Philomel, 2002) by Robert Blake.

Balto is the dog that led the team on the final, 53-mile trek into Nome. Seppala owned both dogs, but Togo was his favorite, the one he considered to be the superior leader. Many observers agree that most of the glory went unfairly to Balto, who later starred in a movie. There is even a statue of him in New York City's Central Park. Tell your listeners that today's dogsledders retrace this historic route each year in a famous race called the Iditarod.

Ask your booktalk audience if they have ever seen a working dog. Christopher Farran's Dogs on the Job!: True Stories of Phenomenal Dogs (Avon, 2002) features 18 stories about dogs that work for people. Jet, a Border collie, works at the Southwest Florida International Airport. The airport is located next to several parks, swamps, and nature areas that are home to thousands of birds. The larger birds get onto the runways and delay flights. Airplanes (not to mention the birds) can also suffer damage during a midair collision. In the morning and evening, when birds tend to gather on the airport grounds, it is Jet's job to clear them off the runway, thereby saving them from harm and keeping the airspace clear for planes.

Some dogs are trained to search for explosives and drugs in airports. When they find something, they are trained to deny their doggy instincts and sit quietly, while their human handlers take over. Other working dogs turn detective and track down missing people, or assist those who are vision or hearing impaired.

When the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001, dogs helped in the rescue effort. Two guide dogs inside the towers calmly led their owners to safety, while everything around them was falling apart. Search-and-rescue dogs were sent from all over the U.S. to New York. They sniffed through the rubble, searching for people, whose presence they could detect as far as 30 feet away. Sadly, the dogs found few survivors among the many dead. The dogs became so discouraged by the lack of survivors that rescue staff would hide so that the dogs would have the satisfaction of finding them alive. Another special animal working at the World Trade Center site was Tikva, a therapy dog who was simply there to provide comfort to the searchers and survivors. Donna Jackson's Hero Dogs: Courageous Canines in Action (Little, Brown, 2003) tells the story of these amazing rescuers. Ask your booktalk listeners if a dog they know has done anything helpful or heroic.

Students will love hearing about the fine work that our beloved dogs do. They are, indeed, "man's best friend."