Togo, a Siberian Husky, is best known for his part as the lead of a team of sled dogs who carried diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925—an event memorialized today by the Iditarod dog sled race.
You may not have heard of Togo, despite the fact that his team, led by Leonhard Seppala, brought the serum over the longest, most dangerous part of the journey from the rail head at Nenana to Nome. Instead, the dog that lead the final team into Nome, Balto, garnered most of the initial fame, despite the fact that Togo had braved the most arduous parts of the run over the broken ice floes of the Norton Sound.
The team was temporarily stranded after the ice they were crossing broke off and became an ice floe for several hours. When the ice drifted back to the solid sheet of ice crossing the bay, Seppala had Togo jump across the 5-foot (1.5 m) gap in-harness to pull the floe closer to the shore. The harness snapped and fell into the water, but Togo jumped into the water, took the traces in his jaw, and pulled the floes together until it was safe for the rest of the team to jump.
Togo and Seppala braved a ground blizzard that obscured their path and pushed up 5,000 feet over Mt. McKinley before handing off the serum.
Don’t cry for Togo, though: Despite the initial hurrah for the freight dog Balto, Togo and Seppala spent a large chunk of 1926 crossing the continental United States, appearing at Madison Square Garden and featuring in a Lucky Strike cigarette campaign. The tenacity of the Siberian husky breed made them popular in New England, and many modern Siberians can trace their lineage back to Togo or one of his teammates.
Togo (dog) [Wikipedia]
Togo: The Sled-Dog Overlooked by History [TurtleZen]
Leonhard Seppala: Father of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog [SeppalaSledDogs]
Why does it look in the picture like he’s only got 3 legs?
Togo was 10 or 12 when he participated in the Serum Run, and was left lame and unable to run again. He died in Maine.
I’ve just finished reading the book “The Cruelest Miles” and in the book the authors tell about the incident on the ice flow. In their version Togo did not jump across the five foot gap, but was actually tossed across the gap by Leonhard Seppala. The harness did indeed snap as he was pulling to close the gap and Togo did jump into the frigid waters to retrieve the broken strap and pull the flow so the other dogs could pull the sled off the flow.