Today I talked to a tourist from Big Delta, Alaska. He said the iditarod has good mushers & bad mushers. There are mushers that will rent out their dog teams to inexperienced mushers & that is where the trouble started. To some the race is about how much money they can make to others it is about the true spirit of the race. They ran into really bad weather & a lot of the dogs are bred to have thinner coats & lack the protection they need if they run into bad weather. There were only two dogs that died that I know of but maybe two dogs to many?