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"All he knows is what he is not...

...and, unlike what has been posted recently in the true story section of another fan site, that was a racing dog.


Nope...the real Balto never once ran on a team during a dog sled race. There is nothing whatsoever in the historical record to justify the claim that he did.


So who was this Balto? The real-world counterpart of the fictional wolfdog we see in the three animated Balto movies?




It all starts rather vaguely in the mid winter of 1925. Norwegian-born Leonhard Seppala who, at that time and place, was the most famous dog musher in the town of Nome as well as most of Alaska, had just left Nome with a team of twenty of his best and fastest dogs, culled meticulously from his Little Creek kennels. Remaining in the kennel yard were thirteen or fourteen rather dejected dogs (contemporary accounts differ on just how many dogs were left in the kennel yard after Seppala hitched up his team...Seppala himself remembered fourteen in the book Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver, which contains many of his own accounts of his life and adventures in Alaska...other sources say thirteen were left) who had, just a while ago, excitedly anticipated being hitched up to their owner's team. Among them was a large, boxy, barrel-chested and mostly-black Siberian husky named "Balto". Why were Balto and the remaining dogs not chosen by Seppala to be a part of his team? More on that in just a bit...


Before he left, Seppala gave instructions to his co-worker (at the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields) and fellow former Norwegian Gunnar Kaasen, also an experienced dog musher, to use the remaining dogs on a team for whatever need the town, and the company, required of him. He specifically instructed Kaasen to use an experienced work leader named "Fox" to lead the team. Of course, after Seppala left, the line-up of the serum run relay changed, and mushers and teams were added. This included Nome mushers Ed Rohn and Gunnar Kaasen. The two men got their teams together, and prepared to head out to their assigned waiting points in the relay.


Gunnar Kaasen did not own his own team. He used, most often, the dogs which belonged to Seppala, and this included the dogs that were left in the Little Creek kennel yard after Seppala departed with his own team. Kaasen went to the kennel and, with the assistance of one of Seppala's workers, laid out thirteen harnesses and chose his dogs...though the pickings were indeed rather limited. When it came time to assign a dog to the single-lead position, Kaasen decided to ignore Seppala's instructions, and instead put Balto in the lead then and there (not later, as some newspaper accounts tell it). Kaasen had worked with Balto before, and had grown to like him. He felt he could see some spark of potential in the dog that Seppala had either somehow missed or ignored, due to Seppala's assigning him to the slow work team...the "B" team.


What was this "B" team anyway? And why were they considered the "slow work" team? Quite frankly, since Seppala had also spent many years prior to the diphtheria epidemic in Nome (and the serum run relay) racing dog teams, he had come to know what constituted a good, smart and fast dog. He spent several years breeding Siberian huskies (exclusively), and was one of the pioneers of the breed in Alaska. Since he also worked for, first, the Pioneer Gold Mining Company, which was then later bought out by the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields, he also put his dogs through their paces hauling freight and pulling his famous "pupmobile"...a flat rail car modified to be pulled by a team of dogs down a length of track (the "Wild Goose" track) that served the mining region on the hilly tundra outside of Nome. He was also known for ferrying company executives and Alaskan diplomats (and other noteworthy people) back and forth from town to town, and occasionally helping in life-threatening emergencies. He and his dogs, especially his lead dogs, earned great fame. But if, in Seppala's hard, relentless and unforgiving view, a dog could not measure up to the form, talent and speed of a racing dog (on his fast "A" team), then it was spayed (or neutered) and relegated to the slow freighting and work team. The "B" team.


Did Seppala look disdainfully upon those dogs, or mistreat them? Not at all. Seppala was known to have a great love for all his dogs, and took exceedingly good care of them all. He was also known to have an uncanny, seemingly mystical ability to communicate his intentions to them, and develop an amazing bond with them...especially his leaders.


But facts were facts...the slow team was just that...slower than a racing team. Not useful for much except unimportant recreational or routine transportation and for work. The dogs of the "B" team NEVER ran in a racing team. That includes Balto. He never, ever did any racing...the historical record makes no mention of it whatsoever.


(more to come...)

A couple of other interesting claims have been made on the aforementioned fan website. And, before I get into other material related to the real Balto (including pictures), I'd like to address those claims in the most non-directional means possible (again, to avoid incendiary assertions that I am flaming or causing drama...which is absolute baloney. But errors need correcting, to keep misinformation from spreading. So, just as it is necessary to correct the misinformation spread by the Balto animated movies, so too is it necessary to correct the same sort of misinformation spread on fan sites like the one vaguely referred to so far...). And to provide further refutation of the third erroneous claim--that Balto had spent his years prior to the serum run as a racing dog.


Those claims are addressed individually below (the first in this post, the second in the next, and the third after that...):


Balto was the "runt of the litter"
There is absolutely nothing in the historical record which supports this claim, nor even infers anything about it. Quite the reverse...all the descriptions of the real Balto seem to contradict the assertion that he was ever a runt. But first, what IS a runt? Well, most of us already know this, actually. But for the sake of clarity, and for anyone who may not know, let's quickly review. In the litters of most animals (mammals specifically it would seem), a runt is one baby born that is underweight, often sickly. In mammals, it will usually have difficulty in being able to jockey for position to nurse. In birds and reptiles (at least those reptiles which exhibit parental care), it is a baby which may be the very last to get some food offered by the parent...and may get pushed out of the way at feeding time by its larger siblings. In some cases, even to the point of death. It may also be bullied to death, or killed outright. Even in mammals (in the wild at least), the mother may end up abandoning, ignoring (refusing care or nursing) or even killing the runt. This is completely natural, and is a way of weeding out weak or diseased members of the species. In the case of domestic animals, humans often interfere with that natural process and rescue the runt, taking it into separate care.


Now most runts, if they somehow survive infancy, will tend to grow almost to full size and may lead a normal life as a result. They rarely, if ever, do reach FULL SIZE, however. And sometimes, in higher-order animals (as in the case of intelligent mammals like canines and felines), the runt may end up with poor survival skills due to rejection by the mother and bullying by the siblings.


A good resource (of many...though most of them are not terribly scientific about it) online which describes runts: http://timesdaily.com/stories/Runt-of-the-litter,196390






That being said, let's get back to the claim of the real Balto having been a runt. Various sources describe Balto in ways which contradict what has been outlined above. For example (and taking into account the source references I have mentioned in other posts):


"Kaasen thought more highly of Balto. The dog may not have been as fast as the others, but he was steady and strong." (The Cruelest Miles, p. 218)


"Balto was one of the lesser huskies, in Sepp's opinion--definitely a member of the 'B' team. He was considerably larger than Togo and more ruggedly built, but he was a much slower runner." (The Adventures of Balto, p. 13)


"...in a kennel on the outskirts of Nome a big black husky got up and stretched. He was one of some thirty-odd sled dogs belonging to Leonhard Seppala of the Pioneer Gold Mining Company, or rather the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields...The black dog's name was Balto..." (The Race To Nome, pp. 54-5)


The point here? Balto was uniformly described, by contemporaries as well as authors and historians, across time since the date of the serum run, with the terms "big", "large", "steady", "strong", "rugged", "boxy", "barrel-chested". Not at all the kinds of terms used to describe runts at any time in their lives. While Balto was also described as "slow" (meaning, in this case, slower than a racing husky, not simply a slow runner), "plain", "not particularly outstanding", "ordinary", etc., that did not equate with being a runt in his case. He was a large, powerful dog. Definitely not a runt.

Another assertion on the aforementioned fan website pins Balto's age definitely to a certain specific year. Unfortunately, there has been no hard, irrefutable evidence to support that claim. Let's analyze that:


"It is known that Balto was born in 1919, six years before the serum run"
I cannot deny that I have made a claim KIND of like this before...but I have never used any language to indicate that the year of birth was an absolute certainty. Because I know there is nothing in the apparent historical record to pin it down beyond a reasonable doubt. And no amateur or professional historian worth his or her salt would make such absolute statements without verifying source materials which confirm it beyond any reasonable doubt (among those being anything BUT newspapers, which are notoriously unreliable as source material...especially newspapers of the 19th and early 20th centuries).


The fact is that there is no source material or historical record which has yet been uncovered, or made readily-available to public scrutiny, which indicates either Balto's date or year of birth, nor even his parents or siblings (if any, in the latter case). So what DO the sources say about Balto's probable age and birth year?


"Then, at the beginning of March 1933, the [Cleveland Brookside] zookeeper announced that Balto was ailing and had little time left. He had become blind and was partially deaf, and the zookeeper turned the dog over to a local veterinarian and trustee of the Balto Committee, which had helped to oversee the care of Balto. A few days later, on March 14, Balto died.

"Although the newspapers reported that he was eleven, he may in fact have been as old as fourteen. (Seppala had once claimed that Balto was six at the time of the run.)" (The Cruelest Miles, p. 254)


"Balto was only three years old when he helped carry serum across Alaska from Nenana to Nome to save the town's children from diphtheria." (The Adventures of Balto, p. 7)


"But Balto's great heart was faltering. Now age 11, he was partly deaf, partly blind and barely able to move his back legs, which were inflamed with arthritis and stiff. It was clear to his keeper, Captain Curley Wilson, that Balto was dying, breathing with difficulty and sleeping so much that every time he drifted off, Curly [sic] wondered whether he would awake.

"Finally, a kind veterinarian, Dr. R.R. Powell, offered to ease Balto's last days--to make him more comfortable and gently end his struggle. Curley accepted, and Balto was carefully moved to Dr. Powell's animal hospital--just in time...Dr. Powell insisted on caring for Balto free of charge...On Tuesday, March 14, the veterinarian injected the comatose, or nearly lifeless, dog with a drug to hasten his slide into peace. Balto died a few hours later--at 2:15 p.m." (The Adventures of Balto, pp. 69-70)

And now to review some facts regarding the following assertion on that fan website:


"He spent his entire life, up through the serum run, running in dog races"
This is quite an interesting assertion. I've never seen any mention, in any historical document or account, of Balto having run in any race. Though it is often mentioned that newspapers of the time, covering the serum run, and talking about Balto afterwards, made grand statements regarding what sort of history he had (including that he had been in many races). However, as I have so often stated (and this has been proven by far better historians than me...including many professional ones), newspapers are notoriously unreliable as historical resources for research. At best, they can be considered secondary source material-- the stories and even pictures in them which must ALWAYS be cross-documented by other more reliable and primary documents and records...handwritten, printed and photographic.


Okay...so how do we know it is entirely unlikely that Balto ever participated in so much as even a single dog sled race? Again, there are the source materials (even statements from his owner, Leonhard Seppala...who raced dogs extensively. And you'll note that, in the first excerpt below, even a contemporary account by Sepp himself refutes the newspapers and their "accuracy"):


"On my first trip to the States my attention was called to a newspaper report quoting me as saying that Fox and not Balto was the hero of the drive. I hope I shall never be the man to take away credit from any dog or driver who participated in that run. We all did our best. But when the country was roused to enthusiasm over the Serum Drive I resented the statue to Balto, for if any dog deserved special mention it was Togo.

"I bred and raised Balto, naming him after a Laplander who accompanied Dr. Nansen when he crossed Greenland in the [eighteen] eighties. I had often tried him, giving him every chance in my fast team, but he could not qualify, so I used him in a slow work-team. After the drive we sold the dogs in the team with Balto to a moving-picture concern in California for a small sum, and Balto for a much higher figure on account of the publicity given to his 'glorious achievements'." (Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver, p. 281)


"There was plenty of scandal connected with the drive, and there were many rumors as to the various individuals commercializing it. The chief thing which disturbed me was that Togo's records were given to Balto, a scrub dog, who was pushed into the limelight and made immortal. It was almost more than I could bear when the 'newspaper' dog Balto received a statue for his 'glorious achievements,' decked out in Togo's colors, and with the claim that he had taken [Norwegian polar explorer Roald] Amundsen to Point Barrow and part way to the Pole--when he had never been two hundred miles north of Nome! By giving him Togo's records he was established as 'the greatest racing leader in Alaska,' when he was never in a winning team! I know, because I owned and raised Balto, as well as Togo." (Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver, pp. 294-5)


(Note in the quote above that, though Seppala mentions that Balto "was never in a winning team", he also said earlier in the book that he had tried Balto...tested him for possible racing ability for the fast team, but that the dog "could not qualify". It's important to take the latter comment within that context. You can also see a lot of bitterness and anger in Seppala's comments, which were laid down at various times in the years following the serum run. As Seppala once said: "In Alaska, our dogs mean considerably more to us than those 'outside' can appreciate, and a slight to them is as serious a matter to their drivers as if a human being's achievements were overlooked." That quote appears on pp. 280-1 in the same book. But it's important to remember that, before the serum run, and all the hype and fuss afterwards by the press corps, Seppala paid no special mind, negative OR positive, to Balto. To Sepp, he was just another member of the "B" team in his kennel...a work dog who was treated with the same attention and care as any other dog. And shortly after the serum run, after Kaasen took the team down to the U.S. for Sol Lesser's movie, Sepp never actually saw Balto again...and by all accounts was more than happy to be rid of him.)


"Sepp--as Seppala's friends called him--felt he could tell 'A' dogs from 'B' dogs as pups. 'A' dogs were used for long-distance runs and races and bred; 'B' dogs were neutered and consigned to hauling freight...Balto was one of the lesser huskies, in Sepp's opinion--definitely a member of the 'B' team." (The Adventures of Balto, pp. 12-13).


"The black dog's name was Balto, and his kennel boss, Leonhard Seppala, considered him only a fair dog--a good enough freighter, but without any outstanding characteristics and certainly lacking sufficient speed to make one of Seppala's famous racing teams." (The Race To Nome, p. 55)


"Balto was relatively inexperienced. Seppala considered the animal to be second rate. He was too slow to make the first string, and was used principally to haul freight on short runs." (The Cruelest Miles, p. 218)






So how do I know for certain all the misinformation was laid down on the aforementioned, but not specifically-identified, fan website? Because I've seen it first-hand. And screen capped the whole thing. And I screen-capped the shoutbox discussion between the site's webmaster and the member who said that he was writing the material. I won't show it here, to avoid a controversy (because some of the members of that site are also members here...even if only occasionally...and, well, you probably know how that goes). And I am sure the information will be amended shortly, once word gets out that I posted all of this. But the original material was there, and has been there for weeks now. I find it unfortunate that the webmaster and staff allowed this information to be posted without reference materials being listed or referred to, and without checking the information which the writer posted as "facts".






Now that that's all over and done with, the following postings will contain pictures and historical information! Coming soon!

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