Canada is really a disgusting place when it comes to canine slavery. Please boycott/do not patronize ALL sled dog tours.
‘Our hero’
From February 16, 2007 Yukon News: “Mackey’s dog team is in the dark” by Genesee Keevil yukon-news.com/sports/6554
Lance Mackey likes to keep his dog team guessing. There’s no routine, said the reigning champ. The dogs never know how long they’re going to be running for, or when they’re going to eat.
“They don’t know what’s coming,” he said with a grin. “But I can give them anything it takes and they will take it.
“And I do this in training as well – I go with the flow.”
‘Man wants answers behind skull inserted in his mailbox’ Whitehorse Daily Star – February 6, 2007
Story by Star Reporter Chuck Tobin
A local anti-trapping lobbyist who found a bleached wolf skull in his mail box is still waiting for an explanation from whoever delivered the insult.
“He has to explain himself,” Mike Grieco insisted in an interview last week. “I know it was not a gift.”
“What was his real intention? Was it some sort of threat?”
Grieco filed a complaint with the RCMP after finding the skull in his mailbox.
The skull was left in the mailbox at Grieco’s Whitehorse home in mid-January. It was accompanied by a permit issued under the Wildlife Act authorizing trapper Frank Johnstone of Teslin to give away one bleached wolf skull as a gift.
Johnstone is declining comment on the wolf skull, though he and Grieco have exchanged heated opinions recently in letters published in the Star’s opinion pages.
Grieco is staunchly opposed to trapping as cruel and inhumane, and entirely unnecessary in modern times.
Johnstone staunchly defends trapping as a legitimate and humanely acceptable means of managing and utilizing furbearers, a renewable resource.
Grieco said the skull was more of an insult to the wolf than it was to him, and he’s not sure what to do with it now.
“I do not want to exploit it,” he said.
“Most of these animals were killed without sensitivity and I do not think they should be used for pen holders or something.”
And now for a poem!
The following poem was published in a regular opinion column (‘Ramblings’) in the Yukon News on October 17, 2007 by Mr. Doug Bell (using the pen name ‘ Hugh Conner’ – Yukoner), retired publisher of the Yukon News in Whitehorse. Mr. Bell was apparently offended by the few vocal animal rights people who speak up on behalf of Yukon animals.
Yukoners need to hunt, trap, and mush dogs or they are not very happy campers. It should be noted that Mr. Bell, when he was a newspaper publisher, apparently never had any of his reporters do their due diligence in investigating animal cruelty affecting sled dogs, in particular the Yukon Quest dogs who have suffered and died in the 25 years the disgraceful race has been staged. Is it any wonder why some of us are somewhat embarrassed to live in the Yukon? Thanks for the poem, Hugh!
‘The New Law of the Yukon’
This is the New Law of the Yukon
And Cheechako’s have made it plain
Send me your foolish and feeble
Send me your weak and insane
Weak are the pampered and serviced
Insane for the need to reform
The pioneer people who built me
Force them to comply with the norm
Swift as a panther in triumph
The newcomers pounce on their prey!
Helpless the pioneers cower
To their misguided and bullying way
No smoking, no mushing, no fishing!
No driving, no fun and no say
About what is acceptable action
Or lifestyle or freedom today
No respect for those who have suffered
To build them this home in the North
My doors have been opened to people
Proclaiming my laws have no worth!
These newcomers claim we are evil
Mindless and cruel and mean
For protecting our claim as a people
Not ruled by the Southern regime
No eating of meat, no forestry
No seeking of Klondike Gold,
The thought police are coming
For us to force us to do as we’re told!
My heart is broken to pieces
As the newcomers squabble and fight
They pave over my golden hist’ry
With social correctness and spite
My Sourdoughs’ struggles have ended
As they are now harried and gray
Too tired to battle these morons
Who feel that they know the right way
It is said that we won’t go to meetings
But we are busy attending our works
‘Cause what is the point of opinion
When your home is invaded by jerks?
‘Hugh Conner’ (with apologies to Robert Service)
