Sarah Siberian wrote:
Coaster wrote: "Togo was an extraordinary dog. To still be running on a main team at the advanced age of twelve years is incredible, let alone being a lead dog."
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There's no doubt about it - Togo was an amazing dog. But when Togo was 12 years old, he was living at the Seppala-Ricker kennel in Poland Spring, Maine and had been retired for about a year.
There are some stories which say that Togo was 12 years old at the time of the serum run, but that is not the case. Those incorrect accounts have apparently just been perpetuated over the years to the point where some have accepted them as being fact.
For everyone's edification (and please forgive the overall length of this post...I summarized why in my final thoughts at the bottom)...allow me to present some relevant quotations from two
reliable sources...the first two from the book
The Race To Nome: Alaska's Heroic Race To Save Lives, by Kenneth Ungermann):
"The shadow of an impending event was also being cast across Togo's future. But now, like Balto, he was unaware that in a few days he, too, would play a vital role in bringing the serum one step closer to Nome. The twelve-year-old dog could not know the grueling drive would be his last great race before a well-earned retirement." (p. 56)
"When Togo was eight months old, Seppala had to make a lengthy trip to Dime Creek, a mining camp up the Koyuk River. In order to keep the little husky from following the team, Seppala locked him in the dog corral, a small yard enclosed with a seven-foot high wire mesh fence. As an added precaution he told his assistant not to let Togo out for a day or two." (p. 116)
Seemingly related to the above quote comes the following from the book
Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver...most of which are
direct accounts by Leonhard Seppala himself, as recounted to Elizabeth Ricker, who compiled the book for publication in 1930 (and wrote the prologue). Hardly a "whitewash", as it has been called here on one occasion...but a good historical resource. This "next winter" Seppala refers to, below, is 1917...a year after the Ninth All-Alaska Sweepstakes Race, which was held April 13th, 1916 (a matter of record). He specifically recounts that race in this same chapter, in the few pages before the first quote below. The next quote is from the last chapter of the book, which is devoted to his summary recounting of Togo's life...reinforcing the earlier quote (and both quotes below reinforcing the quote above from Ungermann's book.)
"The next winter I was out on the trail with my dogs as usual. Again Stevenson and I made a trip to Koyuk River and Dime Creek" (p. 242)
"It was in November that Stevenson and I struck out for Dime Creek with the team. There had been no thought of taking Togo along, as he had not yet been in harness, but I took the added precaution of securing him in the corral, with instructions not to turn him loose for a day or two, as I felt sure the little dog would follow us if possible." (p. 285)
In the chapter which contains the quote above, Seppala refers to Togo as a "puppy" in the paragraph immediately preceding this one. And indeed, that is just what he was. Now, if what Ungermann said is true...and certainly he would have sat and talked with Seppala at length and they would have covered many topics, including Togo, that would place Togo's apparent birth date sometime in April of 1917. But he doesn't reference a specific date. And indeed, Seppala mentions in
Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver that he made several runs out to Dime Creek. Being a supervisor for Pioneer Gold Mining Company, later Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields, as he mentions himself (having moved up the ranks from the bottom through the early 1900s), he certainly would have made lots of trips out to various mining camps of the company. And that is just what Dime Creek was...a mining camp. And Stevenson was a manager of the company (
"Once I took Stevenson, the manager of my company, to Hot Springs in the Kougarok." p. 173,
Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver).
So it is not a certain thing that Togo would have been born in 1917, as that would contradict Ungermann's later quote (the first quote I actually referred to at the top of this post) that Togo was twelve years old during the serum run. So what help do we have in that regard? Well, most people who have ever driven a dog sled know more than I do about what age meets the minimum requirement for putting a dog in the lead position of a team. And it is logical that that experience has changed somewhat from the early days of dog sledding in Alaska and Canada, where freighting and mail runs were more common than dog races, to where now dog sledding is primarily a racing sport and recreational pastime. The expectations of the team are different, as is its job. And the evident and unknown dangers (Alaska was much more a frontier in the early 1900s than it is now, and far less-well-known to Americans and European immigrants).
But we can look to THIS quote from
Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver, at the end of Chapter Ten, which talks more about the All-Alaska Sweepstakes Races...and specifically Seppala's second time in the races, in 1915. The previous year, Togo's father Suggen was Seppala's leader (and had been through other smaller races). According to a statement at the end of the chapter, Seppala makes it pretty darned evident that Togo was his leader in the 1915 race, which would also suggest that Togo had to, I would imagine, be an adult dog by then. If the concept of what it takes to be a lead dog (in my own mind) holds true. Perhaps an experienced musher like Coaster could help me with that. In any case, at the end of that chapter (which covers his part in the 1915 race), Seppala says:
"Probably one of the greatest leaders who ever raced in the Sweepstakes was John Johnson's Kolma, a black Siberian with white eyes, who had more speed and endurance than any dog at the time. On a level with Kolma was my leader, Togo." (p. 233)
Togo's birth year, if the idea of his being twelve during the time of the serum run, would have been 1913. The same year Seppala was given a handful of Siberian females and puppies. Togo
was, according to Seppala, born and raised in his kennels, though he states that Togo was initially owned by a man named Victor Anderson, who grew disgusted with the then unruly and spoiled puppy, and gave him to Seppala when Togo was six months old. So...if Togo was born in the kennels of Leonhard Seppala (to Seppala's female Siberian named "Dolly", known to be one of the initial imports given to Seppala by Jafet Lindeberg, his boss in the Pioneer Gold Mining Company, and a fellow Norwegian), and Dolly was one of the initial imports, it is logical to conclude that Togo was among the first of the puppies born in the kennel.
Is there hard PROOF? Seems to me that no one who has written about the serum run, Leonhard Seppala or Togo in any published work (currently in print, or even any out-of-print works I am aware of, and I HAVE seen some) or elsewhere, has any hard record of Togo's actual birth date. Being that he is a mixed breed, there would be no pedigree. Mixed breed...yes. Either an intentional or accidental breeding between Dolly and Suggen (Seppala's big mixed breed leader from earlier...a Siberian/Malamute mix).
That's the problem with the serum run history (no matter what Sarah or anyone else says to the contrary), and this has been something I have heard time and again in discussion with other historians, documentary producers from the U.S. and Europe, and authors, as summarized by Kenneth Ungermann in the preface of his book:
"During my preliminary research of the 1925 Nenana-to-Nome serum race, I found many of the news accounts written during and shortly after the event distorted or contradictory, largely due to the inaccessibility of the locale of the historic mercy mission. Recording the episode at the time was further complicated by the distance the great race covered. Each of the twenty mushers knew but a few of the other drivers, so there was no one with a comprehensive picture of the 674-mile drive from start to finish. Later magazine articles, although often well and conscientiously written, apparently were based on the early news stories of the event, for discrepancies continued to appear in print." (pp. xi-xii)
Gay and Laney Salisbury, authors of the excellent (though, admittedly, not flawless) book
The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story Of Dogs And Men In A Race Against An Epidemic, also referred to difficulties in research (though also the help of an impressive list of very knowledgeable expert people and organizations), and the often distorted, contradictory information and fallible memories of those involved, or their descendants.
We may never know the entire story, and every facet of it. And what is out there, which
some people like to claim is the only correct information (and that everything else is either mistaken, exaggerated or "incorrect"), is quite often only partially so, if not even that. All we can expect to glean about the serum run is what can be cross-documented by other sources in print, and hard information. Not second-hand accounts and information. Not newspaper stories (usually). What we get is a pretty good overview of the larger event and its participants...not absolute and irrefutable facts.
Sorry for the length, everyone. But
I felt it necessary to provide some reliable documentation.
1,670 miles and i say MOST. Balto did the last leg of the race.
