Togo: The Dog Nobody Wanted

October 1, 2026

The true story of the small, sickly husky who was given away as a pet, broke out to come home, and ran the hardest miles of the 1925 Serum Run to Nome.

Born too small

Togo was a Siberian Husky, a breed from the far edge of Siberia, made to pull a sled for enormous distances through cold that would kill a person.

He was born in 1913 in Nome, Alaska, in the kennel of Leonhard Seppala, the most famous musher in the territory. But Togo was small, and he was sick as a puppy. Seppala decided he would never make a sled dog.

So at about six months old, Togo was given away to live as a house pet.

The window

He did not stay. A few weeks later, Togo jumped through the glass of a closed window and ran miles back to Seppala's kennel.

Seppala let him stay. He never gave him away again.

The puppy nobody wanted grew into a lead dog: fast, clever, and stubborn in all the right ways. Year after year, he ran at the front of Seppala's team. Twelve years later, he was still leading.

The winter of 1925

In January 1925, diphtheria broke out in Nome. Children were falling sick and dying. The only serum that could stop the outbreak was hundreds of miles away, and no plane could fly in that cold.

So a relay of dog teams was organised to carry the medicine across Alaska. Twenty mushers, about 150 dogs, and roughly 674 miles of frozen trail.

Togo was twelve years old by then. Old, for a sled dog. He led anyway.

Across the ice

Seppala and Togo set out from Nome to meet the serum coming the other way. The temperature dropped to around thirty below zero, and the wind made it feel far colder.

To save a day, Seppala made a dangerous choice: instead of going around Norton Sound, he took the team straight across it, over sea ice that could crack and drift out to open water at any moment.

They met the serum. They turned around. And they crossed the ice again.

In the dark

Night fell. A blizzard came in. Seppala could not see the trail at all.

Togo could. He led the team through the dark, across the ice, to the shelter of the roadhouse on the far shore. Hours after they made it across, the ice they had crossed broke up and drifted out to sea.

Then he kept going, up and over the ridges of Little McKinley, before handing the serum on.

By the time his part was done, Togo had run around 261 miles. Most teams in the relay ran about 30.

The dog who got the statue

The serum went on, team to team, until a musher named Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog, Balto, ran the final leg into Nome. The newspapers made Balto the hero. Within the year, Balto had a statue in Central Park.

Togo got very little of the credit. Seppala said for the rest of his life that Togo was the best dog he ever had.

Balto was no villain. He ran a terrible stretch of trail in a storm, and he earned his place. But the hardest miles of the Serum Run belonged to Togo.

His last years

Togo spent his final years in Poland Spring, Maine, old and stiff, his eyesight failing. He died in December 1929, at sixteen years old.

His preserved body is now at the Iditarod Trail headquarters in Wasilla, Alaska. In 2001, a statue of him was unveiled in Seward Park, New York. In 2019, a film finally told his story to the world.

It took almost a century for most people to learn his name.

Why we still tell his story

Togo was the puppy who was too small, too sick, and given away. He broke a window to come home. And when a whole town needed someone to cross the ice in the dark, he was the one who found the way.

The dog nobody wanted ran the miles nobody else could.

Togo at a glance

Born: 1913, Nome, Alaska
Breed: Siberian Husky
Musher: Leonhard Seppala
Famous for: leading the longest and most dangerous leg of the 1925 Serum Run, about 261 miles, including two crossings of Norton Sound
Died: December 1929, Poland Spring, Maine, aged 16
Remembered by: his preserved body at the Iditarod Trail headquarters (Wasilla, Alaska), and his statue in Seward Park, New York (2001)