A7
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2019
Iditarod racer whose dogs quit says they got spooked
By MARK THIESSEN
Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The
Iditarod musher who was hours
ahead in the Alaska wilderness
race when his dogs refused to keep
running dismissed critics who say
he ran them too hard and chalked
it up to a bad memory that spooked
them.
The team stopped last week
after Frenchman Nicolas Petit
yelled at a dog that was bullying
another, but they “did not slow
down like a tired team would,” he
said.
It came a year after they got
lost in a blizzard near the same
spot along the Bering Sea coast
— close to the fi nish line of the
1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled
Dog Race that takes global com-
petitors across mountain ranges
and wind-swept ice.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a curse for
me, I just had a bad time last year
and lingering effects of the bad
time this year,” Petit said.
It was pure coincidence that it
happened at the same point in the
race, he said.
“They remember that we didn’t
have a fun run,” going through the
snow the wrong way, Petit said
AP Photo/Mark Thiessen
Nicolas Petit gets kisses from his dogs in Anchorage, Alaska.
Wednesday, sprawling out on a
friend’s sofa in Anchorage.
Dogs from his team piled on top
of him and licked his face. Also
nosing their way in for attention
were Joey, who was the bully on
the trail, and Danny, the younger
male dog who was bullied.
When Petit withdrew from the
race this year, he said it was a
“head thing” for the dogs.
Then the blowback began —
in press releases, on blogs and
on social media. The most vocal
Gazette: Newspaper
is published every
other week on Friday
Continued from Page A1
They are all printed in
Astoria by The Daily Asto-
rian, which will continue to
print the Gazette.
“Cannon Beach is a
unique market that Coun-
try Media is well-posi-
tioned to serve, given their
ownership of the nearby
North Coast Citizen in
Manzanita and their prior
ownership of the Can-
non Beach Gazette,” said
Heidi Wright, chief oper-
ating offi cer of EO Media
Group.
The Gazette, founded in
1998, is published every
other week on Fridays and
serves the communities of
Cannon Beach, Tolovana
and Arch Cape.
The Gazette’s editor,
R.J. Marx, will remain
editor of the EO Media
Group’s Seaside Signal,
which will increase its
publishing frequency from
twice monthly to weekly
beginning May 10.
Former Gazette reporter
Brenna Visser was recently
promoted to cover county
government and pub-
lic safety for The Daily
Astorian.
critic of the race, People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals,
said it wasn’t the dogs that needed
their heads examined, it was any-
one who supports “the merciless
race.”
Others speculated that Petit
overexerted the dogs, they were
mistreated or were mentally unfi t
to run. Petit denies it all.
“This isn’t any type of a rea-
son to get rid of what I consider
my children — the dogs I raised,”
Petit said. “No, I won’t get rid of
them. They are the most important
thing in my life.”
He also said he’s “stopping
plenty” along the grueling route,
preferring to rest outside check-
points and along the trail when
possible, where he says it’s qui-
eter and the dogs get more sleep.
Libby Riddles, the fi rst woman
to win the Iditarod in 1985, said
the sport requires a fi ne balance
between being competitive and
keeping the dogs happy — some-
thing she said Petit excels at.
“People have this idea that you
can force these dogs” to the fi nish
line, Riddles said last week. “It’s
not like that at all.”
In 2018, Petit rested his dogs
at a cabin between checkpoints
before the disastrous run in the
blizzard. He planned to stay at the
cabin again this year but leave it
with a well-rested team.
Video shows an energetic and
eager dog team entering and leav-
ing the fi rst checkpoint.
Within a mile of the cabin,
the dog dustup happened. Joey, a
2-year-old and the only non-neu-
tered male on the team, was
behind Danny, a 16-month-old
pup. Every time Danny slowed
down, Joey would pick on him.
Finally, Petit yelled, “Joey,
that’s enough!”
“I raise my voice a little bit and
they are all like, ‘Oh, boy, that’s
not normal,’” Petit said. “I try to
be as calming and collected with
my dogs as possible all the time,
so they heard an upset daddy.”
The team refused to keep
going. He tried walking ahead of
them to see if they would follow
and putting different dogs in the
lead. Other mushers came by, but
even that didn’t rouse the dogs.
They fi nally got the mile to the
cabin. Fourteen hours after the
dogs stopped, they took off but
didn’t make it far. Petit took them
back and pushed the panic button
on his GPS unit, effectively with-
drawing from the race.
A snowmobile brought food
and then carted the dogs off the
trail.
Petit still expects to compete
in next year’s Iditarod. He’s said
he’s planning to take his dogs
next week to the problem area —
the Bering Sea coast — to show
them the fun they can have on that
stretch of the trail.
“And that it’s not always blow-
ing, and we don’t always get lost,
and it can be a very positive expe-
rience as opposed to the last two
years,” he said.
Murder: Bite-mark testimony
undermined Roden’s defense
Continued from Page A1
Evangelina Wing’s death
and the abuse of her broth-
ers stunned the North Coast
in 2014. Prosecutors alleged
the children were tortured,
burned, bitten and caged
in the Seaside apartment
Dorothy Wing shared with
Roden.
Roden had faced the
death penalty, and Wing life
in prison, in what prosecu-
tors described as among the
worst cases of child abuse in
the county’s history.
Wing pleaded guilty to
manslaughter and criminal
mistreatment and was sen-
tenced to 15 years in prison.
In return for the lesser
charges, she agreed to tes-
tify against Roden.
During Roden’s trial, the
state called in an odontolo-
gist — an expert in teeth and
bite marks — to show that
an adult intentionally caused
the injuries to the children.
Brown does not agree
with the Department of Jus-
tice’s concession that admit-
ting the bite-mark evidence
was an error.
“We didn’t try to pin it
to any particular person,”
Brown said. “We didn’t
try to say ‘that bite mark
on her arm corresponds
lesser offenses.
“The question of what
caused (Evangelina’s ) death
was central to the jury’s con-
sideration of whether the
defendant’s reckless acts
were to blame,” accord-
ing to the appeals court rul-
ing . “If the jury determined
that she died of infection-re-
lated sepsis, they may have
had reasonable doubt as
to whether defendant was
aware and conscious of, or
cared little about, the illness
and its risks.”
Brown plans to ask the
state a ttorney g eneral to
appeal the ruling to the Ore-
gon Supreme Court.
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with his teeth.’ All we sim-
ply said was it was an adult
mark instead of a child’s bite
mark.”
The defense, however,
argued that the expert tes-
timony casting the wounds
as bites directly refuted the
argument that Wing died
after the infection.
The bite-mark testimony
also provided the state with
evidence crucial to prov-
ing that Roden acted with
extreme indifference to the
value of human life .
Without the evidence,
the defense believes, it
is possible the jury may
have convicted him of
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