168 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



besides being easier to feed and to handle, but when the ice 

 becomes rough, dogs are the only things possible. However, 

 to get the real value out of a dog the team must be looked 

 upon as doomed when it starts on a long sledge trip. A dog 

 must be used as long as there is any need for him, and then 

 killed to add to the supply of food by the meat his own weight 

 represents. 



It is a repulsive thing to reward our faithful animals with 

 death after they have toiled for us day after day ; when their very 

 life is worked out of them, their feet bloody and sore, when they 

 cannot pull any longer, then to shoot them, or kill them in some 

 other way, cutting them up into small pieces and throwing the 

 meat before the remaining dogs. But, however repulsive, it is 

 necessary. The dogs must be sacrificed to achieve the purpose 

 of a certain sledge trip, and it is better to feed them well while 

 they live, and then shoot them when their services are no longer 

 needed, than to take out a pack of dogs expecting to bring them 

 back and half starve them while the sledge trip lasts. 



Our dogs were fed on one pound of pemmican a day, but it is 

 not absolutely necessary to feed them so well, fourteen ounces 

 being quite enough for an average dog. We endeavoured to 

 feed a dog in proportion to his size, and a large hardworking 

 dog might get twenty ounces, while a smaller and less hard- 

 working comrade might only get twelve. Our dogs were all 

 very fat when they were killed, and those we brought home with 

 us had increased in weight. 



A good dog, properly fed and harnessed, ought to be able to 

 pull 100 Ibs. or more, and likewise ought to be able to keep 

 this up day after day. The way in which a dog is harnessed 

 greatly affects his pulling powers, and the harness must be 

 made so as to fit snugly, as it will otherwise soon chafe holes. 



For sledging over level ground the Yukon method of harness- 

 ing the dog is preferable, 1 but for sledging over rough ice the 

 dogs ought to pull each in his own trace, so that each can pick 

 his own foothold. On the pack ice we used the latter method, 

 and the dogs were hitched to the sledge with a six-foot rope, 



1 The dogs are harnessed, like horses, with a swivel-tree and fastened by 

 trace and neck strap to a central rope, and in pairs, one ahead of the other. 

 This is a splendid method, and its only disadvantage is that the foremost 

 dogs are beyond the reach of the whip. 



