ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – When rookie musher Brenda Mackey scratched from the 53rd Iditarod in Tanana last Wednesday, race officials released a now-retracted statement saying she arrived with 14 healthy dogs in harness.
But that wasn’t true.
Mackey told Alaska’s News Source this week that she had activated her emergency beacon en route to Ruby when one of her dogs, Jett, fell ill.
“I literally thought she was dying in front of me,” she said. “In all my racing years, [the beacon] is something I’ve never even looked at, and I pushed it like five times.”
Yet, no officials came to her and her team’s rescue.
Rookie Emily Ford appeared about half an hour after Jett collapsed and stopped to help, Mackey said, before she turned her team around to go back to Tanana.
“By the time I get back, [Jett’s] eyes look normal. She was able to stand,” she said. “I don’t think it was really taken very seriously because she did look good when she got back to the checkpoint.”
Mackey said she was given the normal scratch paperwork when she arrived back at the checkpoint. She signed it assuming she was disqualified for activating her emergency beacon, but said she was later told they didn’t receive her call and didn’t realize she was voluntarily scratching.
“I mentioned I had pushed my button and [an official] said, ‘Well, we hadn’t received any signal of that,’” she said. “I wasn’t computing at the time that that is a scratch form.”
Mackey ultimately made the decision to fly Jett to Anchorage for further veterinary care. She said the dog’s lab work has shown abnormalities, and she is waiting for more test results.
Following the end to her race, Mackey took to her Facebook page to explain her situation, writing that it was “frustrating to say the least.”
The Iditarod Trail Committee (ITC) wrote in a statement that she “unfortunately did not activate [the emergency beacon] correctly.”
The ITC had not yet responded to requests for an interview Tuesday, in addition to the statement released Friday.
Mackey is the latest in a long line of family members who have run the Iditarod; her grandfather Dick Mackey competed in the inaugural race in 1973 and won it in 1978, her father Rick won it in 1983, and her uncle Lance won it four straight years from 2007 to 2010.
Regarding this year’s situation, Mackey said she feels as if she’s been “thrown under the bus.”
“The strange things that [happened] afterwards — they do bother a person a little bit,” she said. “I didn’t even have 14 dogs in harness … That was completely inaccurate.”
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