Sled dog the decline of the working sled dog. Recreational mushing came into place to maintain the tradition of dog mushing. The desire for larger, stronger, load-pulling dogs changed to one for faster dogs with high endurance used in racing, which caused the dogs to become lighter than they were historically. Americans then began to import Siberian Huskies to increase the speed of their own dogs, presenting "a direct contrast to the idea that Russian traders sought heavier draft-type sled dogs from the Interior regions of Alaska and the Yukon less than a century earlier to increase the hauling capacity of their
Sled dog lighter sled dogs." Outside of Alaska, dog-drawn carts were used to haul peddler's wares in cities like New York. In 1925, there was a diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska. There was not enough serum in Nome to treat the number of people infected by the disease. There was serum in Nenana, but the town was away, and inaccessible except by dog sled. A dog sled relay was set up by the villages between Nenana and Nome, and 20 teams worked together to relay the serum to Nome. The serum reached Nome in six days. The Iditarod Trail was established on