The veterinary Maelle Gouix explains how are cared the dog who race in competitions as Diavik 150, that happened from march 28th to 30th 2008 in Yellowknife, NT, Canada.

The French Maelle Gouix was member of the veterinary support at the dog sled Diavik 150, 2008. She said she liked a lot the race, and intends to get more involved with this kind of sport. Last year, she was volunteer at the Iditarod race in Alaska, from the pre-race checks. As visitor she said "it was a fabulous race", and as veterinary, she explains all the procedures with the dogs, after and before the competition.

All the dogs that compete on Diavik 150, get clinical examination, as: a blood sample-for health check, electrocardiogram, urine, and an not for drugs testing (this comes after the races). The veterinary's team, as all members of the event, is made by volunteers who are responsible for take care of all the dog racers.

Before each race, the veterinaries had to check which dogs would be running that day. Every dog on the race has to be identified with a microchip, that's placed under the dog's skin. So, by checking the chips, the doctors could make sure that there was no cheating or fraud.

When the teams came back of the run, Maelle and her colleagues stay there waiting, in case any problem happened with the animals, while racing. Besides the French, the veterinaries Dr. Piscz and Dr. Elkin and their stuff, were also working in the race.

The drug testing is made the last day with the best three teams. Some dogs of those teams were picked randomly and urine was collected, or blood when urine was not possible to get. According to the veterinary, to improve performance of their dogs, mushers could be tempted to give them drugs, like steroids and stimulants.

Sometimes there use medicines not allowed by the race. Most of time, they use anti-inflammatory drugs that would suppress the pain temporarily and hide an injury or a sore muscle. She emphasize that to use this products is not allowed on the Diavik 150.

According to her, very few problems happened in the edition 2008 of the race. The unique common problem is a few diarrhea with the dogs. "This is very common in sled dogs while racing, but is nothing major" - affirms.

We asked her if pet dogs have the same conditions to compete, of the dog racers, with to speed. She answered "pulling is, in theory, it's possible with every dog". Although, the sled dogs that race are actually a mix of breeds that makes them lighter and faster dogs.

The result of this mixture is called "alaskan husky" but it's not a breed as the Siberian one, the Alaskan huskies are just a type of dog. This is good to these racers, because they are light and fast. In addition, there're another differences between males and females. While the females are faster, males are more resistant.

In a race like this, every sled dog requires 10-14 thousands calories of food every day. This high-calorie combination includes: fats, proteins and carbohydrates. This is necessary because their bodies burn fats very fast, much more readily than humans.

Mushers feed the dogs a mixture of different kinds of meats, fats, oils, dry dog foods, and vitamin supplements. Every mushers' recipe is a little bit different, but the bottom line is that the dogs need the best nutrition possible.

The dogs eat a mixture of different kinds of meats, oils, dry dog foods, and vitamin supplements. Mushers also give them, pieces of meat and fat with this stew to add extra calories when needed. Additionally, most mushers give their dogs snacks once every couple of hours while the dogs are running.