Balto

Balto picture (thetobyshow.typepad.com/.../2009/02/index.html)

Have you ever wondered if any type of animal could accomplish something like saving a life? At first when I thought about it I said to myself “they could never do anything like that”, but I was wrong. They can and they have, more than we know. After I was done researching on the types of animals that can save lives I could only think of one particular animal that I thought was a true life saver. It was an Alaskan Husky. His name was Balto. He is my hero because he was an extraordinary dog and saved more people than a regular person could probably do in their entire life. He makes me think if a dog could help people and save lives, why can’t I. He is my inspiration. I want to become a very wealthy person not for the money but to donate to people and animal shelters and people who live in countries that have been in natural disasters.

Picture of Balto (blog.cleveland.com/.../1_balto_a_sled_dog.html)

Balto was used as a sled dog to transport medicine from one place to another. He did this to save lives. He led many adventures on the ice, such as, the world famous 1925 life or death race to rescue the children of Nome. Here is Balto’s heroic story: In January of 1925, some doctors had noticed that a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was probably going to harm Nome’s young people. There was only one serum to get rid of this deadly sickness, and it was in Anchorage, more than a thousand miles away from Nome. Even worse, they couldn’t even use their fast lone aircraft because it was dismantled for the winter. Since the people of Nome were so desperate to get the serum, their officials decided to transport it by sled dog. Soon after that mushers started to join the dog sled relay. There were more than twenty mushers that went. They had to go up against temperatures that rarely rose above forty degrees below zero, and the wind was so strong that sometimes the sled dogs got knocked over. Incredibly only six days later on February 2, 1925 the first musher, (Gunner Kaassen), was coming back to Nome with his amazing team of sled dogs. In the very front was their team leader, a husky named Balto.

He was the dog that helped the team the most and most of all he saved hundreds of people of Nome. He became so popular and famous that a year after the epidemic a cured they built a statue of Balto in New York City’s Central Park. Sadly Balto died in 1933. They preserved his body in the Cleveland’s Natural History museum. They even made an animated movie on him in 1995 called Balto. Even though his life passed away his popularity still lives on.