In the winter of 1925, the town of Nome, Alaska, found itself in serious trouble. Not “we’ve run out of milk” trouble. Proper, life-or-death trouble.
A deadly diphtheria outbreak was ripping through the area, putting more than 10,000 people at risk, especially children. Nome was remote, frozen solid, and cut off from the rest of the world like it had been unplugged from civilisation. The antitoxin existed, thankfully, but it could only be transported by rail as far as Nenana. From there, Nome was still 674 miles away, across snow, ice, and weather that actively resented human optimism.
Planes were grounded. A blizzard was brewing. Boats were useless.
So officials made the only sensible decision left.
They called in the dogs.
What followed became known as the Great Race of Mercy, a relay of sled dog teams passing the serum from musher to musher, paw to paw, across Alaska in conditions that make most of us complain about taking the bins out.
Twenty teams were assembled, including one led by Leonhard Seppala, already regarded as Alaska’s top musher. Against all odds, the relay was completed in just five and a half days. The serum reached Nome. Lives were saved. History was made.
Cue dramatic music.
The final 53-mile leg was led by a dog named Balto, who would become the public face of the run and eventually earn a statue in New York’s Central Park. But behind the scenes, those who understood sledge dogs raised an eyebrow.
Because if you looked at the numbers, the real graft had already been done.
Seppala and his lead dog, Togo, a 12-year-old Siberian Husky with more miles in his legs than sense, had covered a staggering 264 miles, compared to an average of around 31 miles for most other teams. They ran headlong into storms, crossed the treacherous Norton Sound, and quite literally changed the outcome of the mission.
Balto finished the job.
Togo carried the weight of it.
And that distinction matters.
Togo hadn’t always looked like a legend in the making. Born in 1913, he was small, sickly, and such a menace as a puppy that Seppala gave him away. Togo promptly smashed through a glass window and ran back home, because apparently quitting was never going to be his thing.
Too young for a harness, he escaped constantly to chase working teams. He got mauled by larger dogs. He caused chaos. Eventually, a fed-up Seppala did what good dog people often do with difficult dogs.
He gave him a job.
At just eight months old, Togo was put into a harness and ran 75 miles in a single day, naturally working his way into the lead like he’d been waiting for the opportunity all along. From that point on, he became Seppala’s once-in-a-lifetime dog. Smart, tough, fearless, and utterly obsessed with the trail.
By the time the serum run came around, both man and dog were considered past their prime. But when Nome needed saving, experience beat youth. Seppala and Togo charged into the storm anyway.
At one point, they were stranded on a drifting ice floe. Seppala tied a line to Togo and threw him across open water. The line snapped. Togo grabbed it from the water, looped it over himself like a makeshift harness, and pulled the team to safety.
No training manual covers that.
After handing off the serum just 78 miles from Nome, Seppala’s part was done. The final leg went to Gunnar Kaasen, who chose Balto to lead despite Seppala’s doubts. On February 3rd, 1925, Balto ran into Nome to cheering crowds and instant fame.
The town was saved.
The dogs had done their job.
In the years that followed, Balto became the symbol. Togo became a quiet legend among those who knew sledge dogs. Over time, that balance slowly shifted. Historians stepped in. Stories were corrected. Togo received his own statue, his own recognition, and eventually a place of honour at the Iditarod headquarters.
Togo lived out his final years in dignity, passing away in 1929 at the age of 16. Seppala later reflected that when technology failed, and lives were on the line, it wasn’t planes or ships that saved Nome.
It was dogs.
Pickles’ Aside: Humans invent amazing things. But when it really matters, they still end up saying, “Right then… fetch the dogs.”
If you own a Siberian Husky today, there’s a very good chance you’re looking at Togo’s family tree. After the serum run, Seppala and fellow musher Elizabeth Ricker established a Siberian Husky kennel in Maine. When that kennel later closed, the dogs were placed with trusted friends, and those bloodlines quietly spread. According to the Siberian Husky Club of America, every registered Siberian Husky alive today can trace their ancestry back to Seppala’s dogs, including Togo.
So yes, that dramatic howling fluff on your sofa, the one screaming because you’re five minutes late with dinner, is basically royalty. A distant cousin of a dog who once dragged medicine across frozen Alaska and thought, “Yes, I’ll have another blizzard.”
Pickles’ Aside: Don’t tell them this. They already act important enough.