Why dogsleds?

What are the advantages of using 8-12 little animals to pull your cargo, and why is it only popular in the frozen tundra? Is it a weight thing because of the snow?

Need to get a power source…it is cold…you pretty much have to choose from animals…hmmmm…animals in the area…be nice if they can be or are domesticated…

thinking…hmmm…this sort of narrows it down. Dogs fit the bill, and I don’t think much else fits the bill for animal that is capable, native, domesticated, etc.

Process of elimination. That’s my answer.

That’s a big part of it. It’s a matter of weight distribution. A pack of sled dogs may in aggregate weigh the same as a pony or other draft animal, but the weight is spread out over a larger area. Sled dogs individually won’t sink anywhere near as deep in the snow as a larger hoofed draft animal. Also, their paws spread out more, preventing them for sinking as much in the snow. Dogs are really only used to any extent on snow, where other draft animals can’t get much traction.

Another advantage for winter travel is the fact that dogs utilize a much more compact and high-energy food source, fish or meat. A supply of dried fish or meat can be carried on the sled, and additional food for the dogs can sometimes be found by hunting or fishing. In contrast, it would be extremely hard to carry sufficient hay for herbivorous draft animals, and there is little chance of them finding suitable forage en route in the winter. These advantages disappear in the summer, when draft animals can graze or browse during the journey.

Reindeer can be used for winter transport to some extent because they have hooves that spread out and can provide more support on snow, and are also able to subsist on reindeer “moss” (a kind of lichen) under the snow. But horses or draft oxen won’t do very well.

I know that reindeer where/are used for this in norther Europe/Asia. What about North America?

There is no such thing as domesticated caribou in the Canadian arctic (that I’m aware of). Another advantage of dogs is that they don’t break and strand you out in the middle of nowhere because you don’t have parts.

Caribou were never domesticated in America, but in Scandinavia.

PreColumbian North America had very few domestic animals. Dogs, guinea pigs, turkeys, maybe one or two others, but I can’t think of any offhand. South America had llamas, but they weren’t available in the Northern hemisphere. Guinea pig sleds would be pretty unwieldy, so if you want to use any draft animal at all you’re stuck with dogs. Dogs, nothing. Dogs, nothing. I know, let’s use dogs!

Native peoples of North American Arctic did not have reindeer (= domesticated caribou). However, domesticated reindeer were introduced into Alaska in the 1890s, and were at first rather successful, though the industry was mostly gone by the 1950s.

The ‘Lost’ Reindeer of Arctic Alaska

Of course, if one does break down and you are short of food you can feed it to the other dogs. (Or eat it yourself, although this is not an advantage over a horse.)

Incidentally, Robert Falcon Scott used ponies (along with dogs) on his South Polar Expedition in 1911-1912, but they didn’t work out too well.

Also, I think that sled dogs are better physically equiped to handle fridged temperatures, as opposed to some other animal that could have been introduced, caribou notwithstanding.

Good for you, Colibri, you really got it right! As an old-time dog musher, I can tell you there is a vast amount of misinformation about dog sledding and the Arctic in general.

Another advantage over caribou or other large animals is that if things get dicey, you can eat one of the dogs and still mush on with the other 6, 8, etc, but eating your caribou or pony would leave only you to pull the sled. :slight_smile:

Unlike horses, Siberian huskies can sleep in the snow.

And they guard against bears, too.

Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz had to do this in Antarctica in 1911 when the other member of their team, Ninnis, fell into a crevasse together with the sled containing almost all their food several hundred miles from their base. On the way back, they had to kill the remaining dogs one by one to feed themselves and the other dogs, until they were all gone. But they became sick from eating the huskies’ livers, which are extremely high in Vitamin A. Mertz died of what was probably vitamin A poisoning, and Mawson only made it back after a horrible ordeal in which parts of his skin and hair sloughed off.

IIRC, and I really hope I do since I’m tangling with Colibri, Scott used ponies only and failed; the Norweigian Roald Amundsen used dogs and succeeded. (Ernest Shakelton took dogs with him on the ‘Endurance’ expedition but I cant’ remember if they were eaten or not; the cat, Mrs Chippy, had to be shot too but they didn’t eat her.)

I had actually been under that impression myself, and that’s the popular story line, but I googled to make sure before posting what I did. Many sites mention that Scott had dogs as well as ponies, although he apparently intended to rely mainly on the ponies. The ponies were killed in part to feed the dogs.

From here (one of many cites):

I humbly stand corrected. Sorry - of course all that does take away some of the romance of the whole sorry tale no wonder they didn’t tell us in school :dubious:

And if it is real cold, the dogs can sleep in the tent.

Scott also had skis, which would’ve helped him immensely had he bothered to learn to use them correctly. However, only a few of his men took the time to learn to use them effectively - most saw them as novelties.

As mentioned before, Scott had sled dogs, and sleds, but again, didn’t know how to use them effectively. He wasn’t an effective dog handler and was stymied by his dogs’ propensity to fight, a propensity he probably could have handled if he was more comfortable training dogs. He also used a different harnessing system than Amundsen, a harnessing system that some accounts say was not as efficient at directing the dogs’ power forwards. If he’d spend more time and gained a little knowledge, he would’ve seen that ponies are completely impractical in polar terrain.

He also had two or three very expensive mechanical sledges that survived the long boat trip to the South, only to have one break through the ice and sink once they got there. These mechanical contraptions, although probably very advanced technically, also weren’t engineered for the extreme cold and thus, the remaining ones didn’t work very well anyway.

Another factor, perhaps the largest one, against Scott was his damn British pride. The British thought of his day focused on the divine struggle of man and man’s ability to overcome. It wasn’t seen as sporting to use dogs, skis, or mechanical sledges - you didn’t really conquer it and attain the pole if you did it by something other than man hauling. Man hauling was seen as a real achievement. More’s the pity.

An account in one of the books I read told of the British expedition being astonished when they saw Amundsen pull up on his skis with his dog teams, stop on a dime, and then tell his dogs to lie down and be quiet. They simply couldn’t imagine that skis could be used so smoothly or that dogs could be trained to execute as a team and generally get along.

All this information is gleaned from the several books I’ve read on Scott and Amundsen; here’s a few books to get you started if you’re interested:

A First Rate Tragedy
Scott’s Last Journey
Race to the Pole