The Draft Dog - Past and Present

By Guillaume de Lavigne

The draft dog is a fascinating subject. In the old days it was a working dog, a beast of burden. Today it is our leisure and sport companion. In the 21st century practicing dog drafting is fun and a rewarding sport activity, both for the master and for the dog(s). This book deals only with the draft dogs and their activities, commonly called dry land mushing or dog carting and not with sledge dogs. In the first part of the book we’ll approach the history of the draft dog. Then we will look at the main protagonist of the subject, the dog, at the hardware, at all sports and recreational activities and we’ll tackle some of the specific educational aspects to train the dog as a draft dog. “Use it or lose it” is a golden rule that applies to our brain, to our fitness, to our dog. Keep it active and it will live happier and longer and you, you'll have an unsuspected and unrivalled pleasure! I wish you a pleasant and instructive reading! Be it for you a sting to be ... hitched up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326218447

Book preview

The Draft Dog - Past and Present

The Draft Dog, Past and Present

First edition

Copyright © 2015  Guillaume de Lavigne

All rights reserved

ISBN : 978-1-326-21844-7

This book is under licence Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) which you can read here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/deed.en

or write to :

Creative Commons

171 Second Street, Suite 300

San Francisco, California 94105, USA

http://www.lulu.com

Distribution by Lulu.com

3101 Hillsborough Street

Raleigh, NC 27067, USA

The front cover picture shows a Greater Swiss (left) and a Bernese Mountain dog. It has been kindly lent to me by the distinguished Austrian breeders Hans und Grete Stadlbauer of the kennel von der Gänsewiesen. 

Foreword

The draft dog, once a working dog, today our leisure and sport companion, is a fascinating subject. In the 21st century practicing dog drafting is a fun and rewarding sport activity, both for the master and for the dog(s). We are far from the often barbaric treatment to which a draft dog was exposed to in the past. In those old days, it often was a beast of burden, but not always. That’s why I’ve chosen the picture above, showing a young butter delivery boy helping his working companion: a perfect team.

The book’s title is ambiguous though, because a draft dog is attached to a two-, three- or four-wheeled vehicle or to a snow scooter, while a team of sledge dogs pulls a sledge, but are draft dogs as well. Nevertheless, when one talks about a team of sledge dogs – Please! Do not say a pack of sledge dogs, but a team. – we immediately understand a number of harnessed dogs hitched up in front of a sledge in order to go across snow and ice. We also realise that only a few breeds are concerned: the Alaskan Malamute, the Alaskan Husky, the Greenland dog, the Samoyed, the Siberia Husky, the Canadian Eskimo dog and the Chinook, though many other breeds are used. Formerly used for transportation in arctic areas, hauling supplies in areas that were inaccessible by other methods, nowadays, they are also cherished for recreational purposes and are raced in events known as dog sledge races such as the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest.

This book deals only with the draft dogs and their activities, commonly called dry land mushing, dog carting, dog drawn carting. These descriptions are rather inadequate since they limit the amount of dog draft activities to a very few and yet they are so many and so diversified. From now on, we’ll call it dog draft activities, which is sport or recreational activity in which a dog or a few dogs pull a bike, a scooter, a cart … or even a sulky. It is interesting to note that the term dogcart is primarily used to mean a particular type of light horse-drawn vehicle. Indeed, a cart is a two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle of various types, both for carrying people and for goods, while a four-wheeled vehicle is most commonly called a waggon. We’ll come back to this later.

A very old Walloon expression says: « Pôves nozôtes et les tchéns d'tcherete » (Poor us and our cart dogs), which means that, even if we have reasons to complain, there are others who are more pitiful. At the dawn of time, the dog was a working animal, secondarily a companion. It was crossbred to the liking of the caprices and needs of men to obtain an animal that was better adapted to their needs, hence the different dog breeds: hunting, guarding, police, rescue dogs, etc. Many of these breeds have disappeared or are in the process of disappearing, because they have become useless to men and if some survive, it is because they have been diverted from their main use. Take the poodle as an example: formerly an excellent duck hunting dogs, now a pet. Another striking example is the draft dog, now prohibited in most Western countries and also downgraded as a pet dog. The Belgian Mastiff, the most powerful draft dog that ever existed, nearly disappeared.

However, a breed that was created to perform a certain task keeps it in his genes and wants to appease his instinct, his passion. A hunting dog, although a pet, is and will always remain a dog which wants to hunt, whether or not it is of high extraction. The draft dog was created to pull something and that’s what it wants to do to be joyful and happy. And it’s not only the dog which likes to be harnessed! A draft dog is and always will be a working dog. This definition makes some rise their hackles. Let’s understand each other.

Dog lovers have conceived a definition for a group of dogs, which they call utility dogs, also known as working dogs, which are dogs that perform tasks and were educated to do so, to assist or help men. This word is also given to certain dog breeds whose primary purpose was to be useful in a broader way. This does not imply that other breeds, those who are not part of this group, are useless! Think of the racing Sighthounds. Any dog can work for its pleasure and that of its owner! The fact that a hunting dog is educated for hunting, a shepherd dog for herding, etc. seems obvious and deserves no comment. But apart from this purely functional, utilitarian aspect, there are a host of casual and sport dog activities, organised competitions, to which I would add some family and recreational activities.

Work does not mean slavery! Working with a dog, is giving it the opportunity and means to have fun and to be useful, to improve and exploit its physical and mental abilities, shortly, to be happy. Working with one’s dog must remain a hobby and not a duty or a race to glory or looking for a disproportionate exploit. Any excess is harmful! Working with one’s dog is to entertain the dog, is having fun with one’s dog. This is the definition that I give to the concept of working dogs and of many other canine activities such as agility, flyball, canicross, disc dog, canine freestyle, etc.

« Use it or lose it » is a golden rule that applies to our brain, to our fitness, to our dog. Keep it active and it will live happier and longer and you, you'll have an unsuspected and unrivalled pleasure!

In the first third of the book we’ll approach the history of the draft dog, rather disjointed, because it has never been widely published, although omnipresent in Europe for centuries. This story is worth reading and being comprehend. We will then look at the main protagonist of the subject, the dog, at the hardware, at all sports and recreational activities and we’ll tackle some of the specific educational aspects to train the dog as a draft dog.

Be aware that this book is not a handbook of dog education! Before starting dog drafting activities, the dog should have received a thorough basic training. I’m referring those of you, who want to learn basic educational dog training, to Pryor’s book Don’t shoot the dog. To explore the dog’s behaviour, psychology, senses and much more, read Stanley Coren’s series of books. This book aims at attracting novices who don’t know what dog drafting is about and to show them what kind of activities they could do, besides going for a walk with their dog or attending well-known activities such as agility, Frisbee dog and others.

I wish you a pleasant and instructive reading! Be it for you a sting to be ... hitched up.

The Dog Cart by Henriette Ronner-Knip (1821 - 1909)

A little bit of history

Once there was …

http://1.1.1.3/bmi/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Karrenhund_griechische_Vase.jpg/220px-Karrenhund_griechische_Vase.jpg

The first trace of a draft dog dates back approximately 500 years BC. It is the representation on a Greek vase of two powerful dogs harnessed to a cart with solid wheels. In the Department of  antique Greece and Rome in the Louvre, you can see two small terra cotta statuettes dated from the 2nd or the 1st century BC representing a man and a woman leading a pair of dogs, long-tailed Malta dogs, hitched up to a two-wheeled chariot. Dog teams in the far North of Europe however date back from well before, but we do not know from exactly when. According to one source one would have found clues dating from 6,000 years BC, which would prove that dogs were used in teams. According to another source sledge dog breeds probably appeared for the first time in Mongolia 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. Scientists believe that humans migrated north of the Arctic Circle with their dogs about 25,000 years ago and begun to use them as sledge dogs about 3,000 years ago. More concretely, petroglyphs, rock engravings or carvings, illustrating sledge dogs were found near Tanumshede, Bohuslän, Sweden (located Southwest, above Göteborg) and are dated from 2,000 to 2,500 years BC. (The Rock Carvings in Tanum near Tanumshede, Bohuslän, Sweden, have been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO because of the high concentration of petroglyphs.) Sledge dogs are characterized by their speed, their endurance and their ability to find their way even in the worst weather conditions such as snow storms or during extreme cold. The strength, the power they develop has only a secondary role. It's speed that counts. A draft dog, often hitched up alone, has to pull a vehicle weighing three or four times its own weight in a reliable and safe way. Speed only plays a secondary role. As soon as the carriage moves, the towed weight becomes lighter and keeping it moving on flat ground no longer prompts for a great force. In this working dog function, only large and powerful dog breeds were selected.

The Roman historian Lampridius cites draft dogs of the Emperor Helio Gabalus, who reigned from 218-222 AC: "His four powerful dogs were not only fed from geese livers, but also attached to a carriage to drive inside his palace and on his land."

In antiquity and until the 15th-16th century, a cart represented a luxury object which only the wealthy could afford. Similarly, only the rich could meet the expense of feeding one or more dogs. A goose was seen to be much more valuable; not only was it a high-class fare, but it was also a good guardian. Horses were also regarded as valuable animals.