(Photo courtesy of Bob Hallinen/Anchorage Daily News)  A Golovin village grade-school teacher who observed Iditarod musher Ramy Brooks mistreat his dog team -- an episode that led to the veteran Healy musher's disqualification -- saw something more disturbing than what Brooks or Iditarod officials have reported.

  (Photo courtesy of Bob Hallinen/Anchorage Daily News - Brooks was disqualified from the race for dog abuse)

When Brooks' team refused to move, said 28-year-old Maude Paniptchuk, who teaches kindergarten through second grade at Golovin School, he kicked the dogs and hit them with his fist and a ski pole. He didn't merely spank them with a thin piece of lath used as a trail marker, as Iditarod officials said.

And contrary to an earlier account reported by Brooks' business manager, it wasn't a tangle of students that caused the dogs to stop on a patch of ice on the outskirts of Golovin, a small village on the Iditarod Trail about 15 miles west of White Mountain -- the dogs appeared exhausted, she said.

Besides herself and her 1-year-old son, there were only two small children and a grown man who observed the incident, she said. And she was not the one who initially filed a complaint about it, though she did describe what she saw to race marshal Mark Nordman when word of the incident spread.

Reached in Nome, Nordman acknowledged that he spoke with Paniptchuk, and he doesn't dispute her story.

On her way home with her son, she saw Brooks pass through the village with his team, Paniptchuk said. Her little boy likes dogs, so she snowmachined out to the end of town to watch the musher leave. When she got there, Brooks' dogs had stopped on a patch of ice -- so she halted about 20 feet away, turned off her machine and watched.

"I didn't want to get too close, because I didn't want to upset the dogs," she said. "I heard him swearing at his dogs, trying to get them to go. Then I saw him hit a couple. And I thought, 'OK, so he's scolding them, trying to encourage them to go.' And we kept watching ... we saw him go down the line and hit each of his dogs."

She never saw Brooks hit the dogs with a piece of 1/4-inch by 1- 1/2-inch lath used as a trail stake -- as first Brooks' business manager, Greg Louden and later Nordman reported.  "No, he used his hand," she said. "And then he kicked a couple, and he used his pole -- like a ski pole -- to hit them."

At the beginning, she watched the scene alone, Paniptchuk said. But then two 8-year-old children, a boy and a girl, who followed her on foot to catch up with her, arrived and watched too.

"They said, 'Auntie, why is he doing that?' I didn't feel right explaining the actions of someone else. I said, 'I don't know, maybe they just don't want to go.' "

She continued to watch for about 15 or 20 minutes as Brooks continued without success to grab his leaders and try to pull them forward, Paniptchuk said. She wanted to leave sooner but her snowmachine wouldn't start and she had to wait for her brother to arrive to start it.

In the meantime, she noticed that a man from the village, who was out cutting wood, was watching too from the other side of the dog team. It was David Amuktoolik Jr., she said.

Amuktoolik was also upset by what he saw, she said.  "He even hollered, he yelled, he said, 'They're not going to go if you treat them that way ... they're not going to go if you hit them.' "

Later, the children told their parents what they saw, and one of them, Sherri Lewis, reported the incident to Iditarod officials.

Reached by telephone, Lewis said everyone in Golovin loves the Iditarod, and it disturbed her to hear her daughter tell her what she saw.  "She just said he was kicking the dogs, and dragging them, trying to get them to go, and hitting them with a stick," Lewis said.

"Just hearing this from my 8-year-old daughter ... It's just a little disappointing. ... It sounded like they were tired. The conditions weren't good. We have a lot of glare ice."

Efforts to contact Brooks or his business manager Monday night were not successful. However, Nordman acknowledged that the account conveyed to Iditarod officials by Brooks himself differs from the school teacher's.

But even the musher's version was grave enough for the three race judges to rule that he should be disqualified on those grounds alone, Nordman said.  "By no means am I disputing what Maude saw," he said. "This had to be dealt with and it had to be dealt with in a quick fashion."

Right now, Nordman said, he's still trying to officiate the end of the Iditarod.  "Once we get back to town, I'm sure there will be much more discussion on it."

Update 5/19/07:  Healy musher Ramy Brooks -- heir to one of the greatest family sled-dog traditions in Alaska -- has been banned from the 2008 and 2009 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race by unanimous vote of the race's board of directors.

As punishment for beating his dogs during this year's 1,100-mile race from Anchorage to Nome, Brooks will also be placed on probation for three years -- if he returns to the Iditarod in 2010.

Brooks issued a statement saying he was "understandably disappointed in the board's decision.'' and planned "to process the implications of the board's decision before making any important decisions about his future."

"I wouldn't wish this on anybody,'' Brooks told a newspaper photographer who found him pacing near a small grove of trees outside a Spenard hotel while the Iditarod board was debating his fate.

Brooks' attorney, Thomas Wang Jr. of Anchorage, said he doubted his client would mount a legal challenge to the board's ruling.  That tactic was tried by former Iditarod champ Jerry Riley from Nenana, the only other musher ever officially banned from the race. It got him nowhere. Banned for life, Riley did, however, win reinstatement to the 2000 Iditarod after a 10-year absence.

Brooks, like Riley, is a professional musher with few career options. It is unclear what Brooks will do now to support his family. Other races are likely to follow the lead of the world's largest and most influential mushing event in requiring Brooks to take a break from the sport.

Rules governing the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon, say that the race honors censures from other races. 

"My guess is that we would honor the censure from the Iditarod," Yukon Quest executive director Julie Estey said.

"Ramy's dedicated his life to dog mushing,'' Wang said. "It's his full-time life.''

A former winner of the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest and a two-time Iditarod runner-up, Brooks was disqualified from the Iditarod in March after admitting to hitting his dogs after they stopped in the Bering Sea coast village of Golovin.

At the time, he said he spanked them with a piece of trail-marking lathe -- something not much more substantial than the average yardstick.

Race marshal Mark Nordman subsequently ruled any striking of dogs violated strict Iditarod prohibitions against dog abuse and kicked Brooks out of the race.

Problems worsened for the musher when Golovin residents revealed that what they witnessed went far beyond a spanking.

Six villagers -- four adults and two children -- were later interviewed by investigators for the Iditarod. They offered consistent accounts of what sounds like a beating.

Robert Moses Sr. "heard dogs crying as if they were in pain,'' Iditarod attorney Robert Stewart, one of the investigators, reported in a memorandum to the board. "After hearing the dogs crying, Moses turned around and saw Brooks kicking his leaders, tugging the gang line. Some of the dogs were lying on their sides.

"Brooks kicked them about three or four times, he then used the towline to try and jerk them up.''

Brooks appeared before the board in a private executive session to defend himself. He was accompanied by his wife, Cathy, and attorney Wang.

Exactly what Brooks said is unknown, but Wang afterward said the musher continues to deny allegations of kicking and punching dogs, or hitting them with a chain or ski pole.

Through the windows of the closed meeting room at the Courtyard by Marriott, a forlorn Brooks could be seen sitting in the open part of a horseshoe formed by tables pulled into place to provide Iditarod board members seats from which to question him. Board members could be seen regularly massaging their temples and rocking their heads.

Brooks was before the board for about an hour. He avoided the press afterward, but both his attorney and Cathy Brooks took time to answer questions from reporters.

Initially near tears, Cathy said she, Ramy and the couple's two daughters have lived a nightmare since the musher's Iditarod disqualification. He has been pilloried in some quarters as a serial dog beater.  "That is not who he is,'' Cathy said. "He loves his dogs.  "He loves his family. It breaks his heart to see the hurt."

She twice, however, sidestepped a pointed question asking if she'd ever seen Ramy hit a dog.  "I've never seen him abuse a dog,'' she said.

Ramy has steadfastly contended the "spankings'' he administered in Golovin --- he told Stewart he went up and down the team spanking dogs several times -- never rose to the level of dog abuse.

On his Web site -- www.ramybrooks.com -- Brooks posted a report from veterinarian Arleigh Reynolds of North Pole saying that an examination of the dogs in Nome after the Iditarod showed them all to be in good health.

"These were all dogs present in the team in Golovin,'' Reynolds wrote. "All dogs were in very good physical condition with shiny coats and no evidence of bruising or hemorrhage ... I found no bruises or sore spots on their skin, and no cuts or abrasions on their face, head, neck, torso, limbs or abdomen.''

Brooks did, however, have a dog die between Golovin and Nome. That dog was coming off a mandatory, eight-hour rest in the White Mountain checkpoint. It went down just short of Safety, the last checkpoint before Nome, and could not be revived.

Veterinarians have yet to determine the cause of death, but they say there is no indication that Brooks did anything to cause it. As part of the necropsy, they also removed its hide, which gave them the best possible scientific examination of bruising likely to be associated with a beating. They reported finding no sign of such abuse.

What villagers describe, however, sounds bad.  Maude Paniptchuk, according to investigators, "saw Ramy try to kick a dog or dogs in the middle of the team. She thinks it was two dogs, but does not know exactly which dogs he kicked. However, Maude is sure she saw that he made contact with a dog and she heard the dogs yelp."

Moses, according to investigators, said Ramy "kicked them about three or four times."

David Amuktoolik Jr. "saw Brooks walking by the team kicking and punching his dogs," according to the report. "Brooks was punching dogs with his fists.  "He (Amuktoolik) got mad, and he then got over to the point where Maude Paniptchuk was. He told Maude, 'I could kick his ass for beating on his dogs.'"

Possibly the most damaging charge from villagers was that Brooks used a piece of chain and a carbon-fiber ski pole to punish his dogs.

In his post-hearing press release, Brooks noted "the board found there was no truth behind the allegation that Ramy struck his dogs with a chain."

Whether he used the ski pole is a more contentious issue. Brooks has admitted he had a ski pole with him, but says he put it down to pick up the lathe.

Iditarod executive director Stan Hooley said the board didn't know exactly who to believe in all of this, but heard enough to conclude serious punishment was in order.

Reference:

Anchorage Daily News