Balto

The final leg of the serum relay was not run by Seppala and Togo, but by Gunnar Kasaan, who reached None on Groundhog Day. Kasaan was driving Seppala's second string of dogs, using a dog named Balto as the lead dog. In Seppala's considered opinion, Balto was a second-rate dog. For once, Seppala was wrong.

Balto, who had suffered bad press as "just a freight dog", surpassed himself in the Great Serum Run. When Kasaan became lost on the ice of th Topkok RIver, it was Balto who scented out the right trail and brought the team in safely. If it had been left to Kasaan, the entire team would have plunged through the ice.

Kasaan staggered into Nome at 5.30am on February 2, 1925. His dogs were cold and exhausted, their feet torn and bloody. But the serum was delivered. Kasaan handed it over to the only physician in Nime, Dr Curtis Welch of the Public Health Service. And then be began to pull the ice splinters out of his dog's feet.

Within five days of the arrival of the serum, he diptheria epidemic was halted. It was the last major outbreak of the disease in North America. And so, out of the Great Race of Mercy to Nome, was born the modern sled race, we call the Iditarod.

During his travels in the east, Seppala left some of his animals with Harry Wheeler of Quebec, who began breeding hem. All currently AKC registered Huskies can trace their ancestry back to this foundation stock.

As far as Kasaan's team went, the musher took the dog on a nationwide tour. Then Balto and company were sold to a movie producer name Sol Lesser, who made a film called "Balto's Race to Nome", eulogizing the dog. Afterward, the entire team was sold again and put on exhibit as a kind of curiosity show. The poor dogs were abused, neglected and forgotten until a Cleveland businesman named George Kimbal, with the help of the Cleveland school children, bought the six remaining dogs for the then astounding sum of $2000. They raised the money in two weeks.

The dogs were brought to the Cleveland Zoo and lived out their lives in peace. When Balto died in 1933, he was stuffed and put ondisplay in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. A statue was erected in Central Park in honor of one of the most famous sled dogs of all time.