Mushers are training all over Alaska, as well as Colorado, Montana, and of course Norway and even Jamaica!
And I follow all that news wherever I can come across it because I AM AN IDITAROD fan!
But, in order to get any news on my favorite musher, I have to re-read old news! Hey, you gotta do what ya gotta do in this world! I thought I'd share in these terrible Mel-less days,
my all-time favorite Melanie Gould story from the ADN.
MGFB
IDITAROD DOG GETS LOOSE,SCAMPERS AROUND AIRPORT
Published: March 10, 2005
Melanie Gould's dog Olive may have been dropped from the Iditarod, but there's no question the husky can still run.
Airport and Iditarod officials spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon and evening chasing the sled dog around the windswept, snow-covered grounds of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport after she bolted off an incoming PenAir flight around 2:15 p.m.
Gould, who is competing in her fifth Iditarod this year, dropped Olive in Rohn, about 270 miles into the 1,100-mile race across Alaska, but officials would not say why the dog was cut from the team and flown to Anchorage. Olive was en route to her home in Talkeetna, about a three-hour drive from Anchorage, when she escaped.
"She just darted out the minute they opened that cargo bay," said Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George.
PenAir officials reached Wednesday declined to comment on the incident.
Airport authorities were notified of the problem around 2:30 p.m. Olive was loose in a roughly 2,100-acre, fenced-in area that includes all of the airport's major runways and trees and brush along the perimeters.
A small group of airport operations personnel and PenAir employees, as well as a few Iditarod officials, tried unsuccessfully for about four hours to capture Olive, said St. George and airport spokeswoman Jennifer Payne.
"That dog can really run," Payne said.
Kim Walker, a pipeline operator at the airport's fuel tank farm, said he spotted Olive at one point near one of the tanks, but she only looked in his direction for a moment and then darted away. "(She) looked more like a coyote to me," he said.
A veterinarian was called out early in the chase and came armed with a tranquilizer in case of an emergency, such as Olive playing chicken with a 747 on a runway, which never materialized, officials said.
The vet and airport operators ultimately decided to let Olive hunker down in some woods on the west side of the north-south runway until dawn, when they figured she'd be hungry and more cooperative, Payne said.
Operations folks kept a close eye on the runways overnight Tuesday to make sure there weren't any problems, Payne said. In the meantime, someone contacted a talkeetna man involved in Gould's kennel and asked him to come in the following morning to help capture Olive.
The man coaxed Olive into custody around 11:15 a.m. Wednesday by calling her name and offering her some fresh hamburger, St. George said. "She's a smart dog," he said. "If she's going to go back home she's going to get something good out of it."
A vet checked the dog and gave her a clean bill of health, officials said.
St. George said he couldn't disclose why the dog was dropped from the race because such information isn't part of the public record. In general, dogs can be dropped at any of the 22 checkpoints along the trail, for any number of reasons, such as a bad attitude, an injury or if they are under the weather. Mushers work closely with veterinarians on the decisions, St. George said.
Iditarod officials have not attempted to contact Gould about Olive's airport adventure. St. George said the musher has bigger things on her mind right now. Gould was in Takotna with her remaining 14 dogs and listed in 16th place Wednesday evening.
Olive-The Girl in Question
(joke in reference to a 2005 Talkeetna Whole Wheat Radio interview with Mel in which Mel was asked that in all the dog poop she sees during a race, had she ever seen one resembling the Pope) 
