Iditarod Found His Lost Dog After Three Months

‘Everybody’s saying if only Leon could talk because I’m sure he’d have a good story to tell!’

Léon lost some weight, but anyhow, the Iditarod sled dog who disappeared from a checkpoint in Alaska three months ago was recently found and seemed to be doing well.

Iditarod’s race director and race marshal Mark Nordman said “For sure he was thin when you know when he was finally caught. But he looks great.”

“It’s an amazing thing. I mean, it just shows you what the Alaskan husky can do and survive with.”

The nearly 1,609-kilometre Iditarod race began March 6, just north of Anchorage. The route took mushers along Alaska’s wild and intolerant wilderness, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and the Bering Sea ice along the state’s western coastline.

Brent Sass won the race on March 15 when he crossed under the famed burled arch finish line in Nome. Such an epic race would be a big enough adventure for most restless dogs, but not Léon. He was at a race checkpoint in Ruby, Alaska, just under 800 kilometers from the race’s start, when he somehow managed to slip out of his collar and skedaddle.

His owner — musher Sébastien Dos Santos Borges of France — had already restarted up the Iditarod trail with the rest of his team. As a result, individual dogs are often left behind with handlers at checkpoints for rest and medical care.

Where Léon went from there is a secret. But people in Ruby really “stepped up,” Nordman said and began looking for the dog immediately after word went around that he was missing. A helicopter got entangled at one point.

“It went on and on. And we’d hear, you know, maybe this was the dog, or wolf tracks — back and forth.”

Nordman says he never gave up hope, though. He thought the dog may have initially bolted back up the race trail, scavenging abandoned dog food along the way.

Then, in late May, word came to Nordman that a homesteader near McGrath, Alaska — about 195 kilometers south of Ruby — had been seeing a dog frequently near his cabin. Word of Léon’s earlier disappearance had spread through the area, and many people had been keeping an eye out for him, including in McGrath.

The homesteader and another musher from the area left food for the dog — Léon — and eventually managed to capture him. Nordman was “elated” when he heard Léon was safe.

Nordman said it was a fantastic reunion. He told Léon, “bouncing around, really happy to be back with Sébastian.”