text: You obviously haven't spent any time as a musher, a musher's handler, or in a sled dog environment based upon your comments.  Dog teams are often treated better than many children I see daily, so you really should do more up close and personal research.  The sled dogs are exempted to 20 minutes for a really good reason - feeding time, snack time, play time, and hooking up to the sled / loading in the dog box time.  During all of those events, the dogs are super happy and they bark - they don't have cell phones, so they can't text the dog on the other side of the lot to say that it's time to eat / snack / play / run - they have to BARK!  The 20 minutes gives the musher the time they need to do these events.  Yes, .01% are bad mushers - but the amount of bad human parents is much higher, so give these hard working mushers a break from your angry and incorrect, broad based accusations and assumptions.