Husky Lore
1925 Serum Run: Togo, Balto, and the dogs that built the breed
150 sled dogs, 20 mushers, 674 miles (1,085 km) across frozen Alaska, one diphtheria outbreak. Seven facts most people get wrong.
In the winter of 1925, Nome, Alaska faced a deadly diphtheria outbreak. The nearest antitoxin was hundreds of miles away. Planes couldn't fly in the cold and blizzards. So more than 150 sled dogs and 20 mushers ran a relay: roughly 674 miles (about 1,085 km) across the Alaskan wilderness.
Seven facts most people get wrong
- Both Balto and Togo were real dogs — not just movie characters.
- Togo did the longest and hardest leg: roughly 260+ miles, including a crossing of the frozen Norton Sound. Balto led the final 53-mile leg into Nome.
- Balto wasn't originally meant to be the main hero — Seppala, Togo's musher, considered him a 'scrub dog'. Togo was his favorite.
- Fame went to whoever finished. Balto got a Central Park statue months after the run.
- Their afterlives were very different: Balto retired in a zoo and was taxidermied. Togo retired with Seppala, lived to age 16, and his body is on display at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race museum.
- Both inspired films — Balto (1995, animated), Togo (2019, live-action focused on the unsung hero).
- Four sled dogs died during the serum run. It was a real, deadly mission of survival.
If you live with a Siberian Husky, you live with the descendant of the dogs that did this. That is part of why they don't quit, why they pull, and why they look at the snow the way they do.