CANINE FRIENDSHIPS 147 



tunately for the visitor, the engine was not started while 

 he was there. 



When the first furious battles had been fought out, a 

 calm soon settled upon the dogs' spirits. It was easy 

 to notice a feeling of shame and disappointment in the 

 champions when they found that all their efforts led to 

 nothing. The sport had lost its principal charm as soon 

 as they saw what a poor chance there was of tasting 

 blood. 



From what has here been said, and perhaps from 

 other accounts of the nature of Arctic dogs, it may 

 appear as though the mutual relations of these animals 

 consisted exclusively of fighting. This, however, is far 

 from being the case. On the contrary, they very often 

 form friendships, which are sometimes so strong that one 

 dog simply cannot live without the other. Before we let 

 the dogs loose we had remarked that there were a few 

 who, for some reason or other, did not seem as happy as 

 they should have been: they were more shy and restless 

 than the others. No particular notice was taken of this, 

 and no one tried to find out the cause of it. The day 

 we let them loose we discovered what had been the 

 matter with the ones that had moped: they had some 

 old friend who had chanced to be placed in some other 

 part of the deck, and this separation had been the cause 

 of their low spirits. It was really touching to see the 

 joy they showed on meeting again; they became quite 

 different animals. Of course in these cases a change of 



