TRAINING THE DOGS TO PULL 



the older dogs, which were tied up, for if by chance 

 one of these dogs got adrift, he was immediately pur- 

 sued by a howling mob of puppies; when the larger 

 puppies were eventually chained up, the smaller ones 

 watched them, too, with jealous eye. After enjoying 

 some months of freedom, it seemed to be a terrible 

 thing to the young dogs when first a collar was put on 

 and their freedom was taken from them, and even less 

 did they enjoy the experience of being taken to the 

 sledge and there taught to pull. I remember that on 

 the first day the dogs simply lay down in front of the 

 sledge, so another method was adopted, Ambrose 

 and his brother being made fast to the rear of the 

 sledge, and pulled willy-nilly after it. After the train- 

 ing had gone on some time on Green Park, the dogs 

 were taken further afield and a favourite run was to 

 Cape Barne and back. The Cape lay about two miles 

 and a quarter to the south-east of our winter quarters, 

 and with a light load the dogs would traverse this dis- 

 tance and back again in an hour. 



Our experience on the Discovery expedition, specially 

 during the long southern journey when we had so 

 much trouble with our mixed crowd of dogs, rather 

 prejudiced me against these animals as a means of 

 traction, and we only took them as a stand-by in the 

 event of the ponies breaking down. Since we were 

 reduced to four ponies, it became necessary to con- 

 sider the dogs as a possible factor in our work, and 

 so their training was important. Peary's account of 

 his expeditions shows that in the Arctic regions dogs 

 have been able to traverse long distances very quickly. 

 In one instance over ninety miles were accomplished 

 in twenty-three hours, but this evidently had been 

 done on smooth sea ice or on the smooth glaciated 

 surface of the land, for it would be impossible to 



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