When does Clavert's in The Hour of the Wolf take place?

When a
story takes place is part of its
setting, along
with where it takes place. Some
stories may take place, be set, in a time period
before they were actually written for historical period pieces,
after they are actually written for futuristic or science fiction
stories, or during the same period of time in which they are
written. Clavert's The Hour of Dog falls into this third
category.

Clavert's story was published in 1980, and the
setting is contemporaneous to the period during which it was written and published.
Therefore, the story takes place just prior to 1980. There is an Iditarod Trail dog-sled
race from Anchorage to Nome in Alaska every year in the early spring (the date for the
2012 Iditarod is March 3, 2012). So the story, published in 1980, is set in the late
1970s.