Dang man! I got ah litter ah pups on the way. About any minute. A litter from my best lead dog and my kindest female. Yah, the demise of the sled dog in the north country has been a bizzare thing. It's my honest opinion that 5-9 dollars a gallon of gas isn't as sustainable as a small team. And the parts on a machine.
Yah it's weird though, that these guys work their heart out, pulling meat that fed for many thousands of years prior. After all that hard work and loyalty to me, they get expired beef I scrounge from butchers. But, fish is too easy as well. Could use more beaver carcass though.
Some of the elder mushers that I've talked to have gripped about it. Rod Perry, who ran the first iditarod, told me that back in the late 60's, he would open the hatch of his Volkswagen beetle, jam a piece of plywood in there, and load that platform down with sled dogs during moose hunting season. He'd use them for pack animals, pack out a whole bull moose. He'd stack all of the moose meat in the volkswagen beetle, while passing all these fancy tracked rigs. When they made moose-in-bone regs, he stopped using pack dogs. Talked to a few elders in noorvik at a bourough meeting, in the 90's they too stopped using dogs.
I once thought of getting out of dogs, and it was the scariest, most empty feeling. Couldn't do it.
My freight sled is still good, but when you have a 14 footer of any width done up, i'll be the first one to jet over there, ah.........gee haw over there. I'll PM you my phone # so we do some bullshting.
If you ever get board, watch this here revival of the working dog with our eastern neighbors:
https://www.nfb.ca/film/qimmit-clash_of_two_truths/
