In 2011, Time magazine awarded Togo the Sled Dog the top spot on its list of “Top 10 Heroic Animals.” It wasn’t the first time that Togo was acclaimed for his bravery, but it had been a long time coming.
Togo was instrumental in the success of the 1925 Serum Run to Nome. The remote Alaskan city of Nome, home to around 1,400 people, had been struck by an outbreak of diphtheria, a highly contagious respiratory infection that is particularly deadly when contracted by children. Fortunately, an effective antitoxin serum had been devised a few decades earlier, yet Nome’s supplies were far too low to treat those infected in the 1925 outbreak.
Getting new stocks of the serum to Nome was no small task. Public health officials sent the supplies as far as they could by train, but that only reached Nenana, which was still 674 miles (1,085 km) from Nome. With rudimentary maps and freezing conditions making a delivery by plane too dangerous, sled-dog teams were chosen to carry the serum overland.
Given the long and treacherous distance, the route was covered as a relay, with 20 mushers and around 150 dogs completing various portions. Leonhard Seppala, a famed Norwegian-born musher who had emigrated to Alaska in 1900, was chosen for an exceptionally difficult section of the run between Nulato and Nome, though this was eventually shortened when more teams joined the run due to blizzard conditions.
Seppala chose Togo, a 12-year-old Siberian husky, to lead his team, as he had done for years. Togo and Seppala had already worked together to supply the Pioneer Mining Company in Nome with provisions and were three-time winners of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes.
With Togo leading the pack, Seppala and his team navigated wind, snow, and darkness. The most nerve-wracking portion of the journey came when Seppala decided to take a shortcut across Norton Sound, a frozen bay, trusting Togo to avoid the holes in the ice. By the time they completed their leg of the relay, they had run some 260 miles (420 km), more than twice the distance of any other sled-dog team.
The last leg was completed by musher Gunnar Kaasen, who preferred to alternate which dogs led his team. Balto, another of Seppala’s Siberian huskies, was the lead dog for part of that journey. In the early hours of February 2, 1925, Kaasen and his team arrived in Nome, delivering the life-saving serum to the people of Nome and halting the spread of diphtheria—and catapulting Balto to "hero dog" status.
A tale of two sled dogs:
- In December 1925, Kaasen and Balto were on hand for the unveiling of a bronze statue of Balto in New York’s Central Park, much to Seppala’s chagrin, as he believed that if any one dog was to be singled out as a hero, it should be Togo.
- Balto was also erroneously credited with many of Togo’s previous accomplishments, including the races he had won with Seppala, and was depicted as the lead dog in staged photos commemorating the run. Balto even starred in a silent film and has been the subject of numerous books and movies over the years.
- In many accounts, Seppala praised Togo’s bravery, instincts, and skill, calling him “the best dog that ever traveled the Alaska trail.” In recent decades, Togo’s role in the Serum Run to Nome has become better known, and he has at last received the credit he deserves. The 2019 film Togo, starring Willem Defoe as Leonhard Seppala and featuring one of Togo’s descendants, Diesel, as the titular dog, helped rekindle interest in the story.