Sled dogs are used in countries and regions such as Canada,
Greenland,
Siberia,
Russia, Norway, Sweden, and
Alaska.
Russia in Siberia A 2017 study showed that 9,000 years ago, the domestic dog was present at what is now
Zhokhov Island, northeastern Siberia, which at that time was connected to the mainland. The dogs were selectively bred as either sled dogs or hunting dogs, implying that a sled dog standard and a hunting dog standard co-existed. The optimal maximum size for a sled dog is based on thermo-regulation, and the ancient sled dogs were between . The same standard has been found in the remains of sled dogs from this region 2,000 years ago and in the modern
Siberian Husky breed standard. Other dogs were more massive at and appear to be dogs that had been crossed with wolves and used for polar bear hunting. At death, the heads of the dogs had been carefully separated from their bodies by humans. Anthropologists speculated that this might have been for ceremonial reasons. The
Kungur Chronicle and the
Remezov Chronicle, created at the end of the 16th century and 1703 respectively, tells about the people living along Siberian rivers, whose primary means of transport was riding on reindeer or dogs. In these documents, the rivers Olenyok, Yana, Indigirka and Kolyma were called "dog rivers", as they were rich in fish for the dogs to eat. Rivers with no fish or not enough to feed the dogs were called "deer rivers," as reindeer were then used for transportation. From the 1940s to the 1990s, Russian dog sled numbers were in decline. The breed population reached an all-time low of 3,000 in 1998 before revival efforts took off. Reasons for their decline include • introduction of mechanization in the Arctic • reduced capacity to keep dogs, especially with reduced fish catches and collectivization of farming and reindeer herding. • decline of fur hunting. These styles of racing required small, fast teams of 1–4 dogs who competed over short, hilly distances of . Required to use purebred dogs by the Norwegian Sled Dog Racing Association, the German Shorthair Pointer quickly emerged as the dog breed of choice. These Nordic-style crossbreeds gained in popularity across Europe and later North America, especially with the rise in popularity of dryland mushing, such as bikejoring and canicross. Sled dogs and husky safaris are not native to
Sápmi (Lapland) and Finland and are considered a major nuisance by reindeer herders as they directly impact their livelihoods. These and glass-domed "iglus" have been appropriated from other cultures by the tourist industry in the 1980s and falsely portrayed as being part of the Sámi and Finnish cultures.
Greenland The
Greenlandic Inuit have a very long history of using sled dogs and they are still widely used today. As of 2010, some 18,000
Greenland dogs were kept in western
Greenland north of the
Arctic Circle and in eastern Greenland (because of the effort of maintaining the purity of this culturally important breed, they are the only dogs allowed in these regions) and about half of these were in active use as sled dogs by hunters and fishers. As a result of reduced
sea ice (limiting their area of use), increasing use of snowmobiles, increasing dog food prices and disease among some local dog populations, the number has been gradually falling in decades and by 2016 there were 15,000 Greenland dogs. A number of projects have been initiated in an attempt of ensuring that Greenland's dog sledding culture, knowledge and use are not lost. The
Sirius Patrol, a special forces unit in the Danish military, enforces the sovereignty of the remote unpopulated northeast (essentially equalling the
Northeast Greenland National Park) and conduct long-range dog sled patrolling, which also record all sighted wildlife. The patrols averaged per year during 1978–1998. By 2011, the
Greenland wolf had re-populated eastern Greenland from the National Park in the northeast through following these dog-sled patrols over distances of up to .
North America In 2019, a study found that those dogs brought initially into the North American Arctic from northeastern Siberia were later replaced by dogs accompanying the
Inuit during their expansion beginning 2,000 years ago. These Inuit dogs were more genetically diverse and more morphologically divergent when compared with the earlier dogs. Today, Arctic sledge dogs are the last descendants in the Americas of this pre-European dog lineage. , sketched in 1833 Historical references of the dogs and
dog harnesses that were used by
Native American cultures date back to before European contact. The use of dogs as
draft animals was widespread in North America. There were two main kinds of sled dogs;
one kind was kept by coastal cultures, and the other kind was kept by interior cultures such as the
Athabascan Indians. These interior dogs formed the basis of the Alaskan husky. Russian traders following the
Yukon River inland in the mid-1800s acquired sled dogs from the interior villages along the river. The dogs of this area were reputed to be stronger and better at hauling heavy loads than the native Russian sled dogs. The Alaskan
Gold Rush brought renewed interest in the use of sled dogs as transportation. "Everything that moved during the frozen season moved by dog team;
prospectors,
trappers, doctors, mail, commerce, trade, freighting of supplies … if it needed to move in winter, it was moved by sled dogs." Sled dogs were used to deliver the mail in Alaska during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Alaskan Malamutes were the favored breed, with teams averaging eight to ten dogs. Dog sleds were used to patrol western Alaska during
World War II. Americans and others living in Alaska then began to import sled dogs from the native tribes of Siberia (which would later evolve and become the
Siberian Husky breed) to increase the speed of their own dogs, presenting "a direct contrast to the idea that Russian traders sought heavier draft-type sled dogs from the Interior regions of Alaska and the Yukon less than a century earlier to increase the hauling capacity of their lighter sled dogs."
Alaska and the Iditarod In 1925, a massive
diphtheria outbreak crippled
Nome, Alaska. There was no
serum in Nome to treat the people infected by the disease. It usually lasts for ten to eleven days, weather permitting. The teams are then loaded onto trucks and driven to
Wasilla for the official race start in the afternoon. and "The Last Great Race on Earth".
Antarctica The first Arctic explorers were men with sled dogs. Due to the success of using sled dogs in the Arctic, it was thought they would be helpful in the Antarctic exploration as well, and many explorers made attempts to use them. The dogs were used to working on snow, not on ice, in much milder temperatures.
Roald Amundsen's expedition was planned around 97 Esquimaux dogs (possibly
Canadian Eskimo Dogs,
Greenland Dogs or both). On his first try, two of his dogs froze to death in the temperatures. He tried a second time and was successful. Amundsen was covering a day, with stops every to build a cairn to mark the trail. He had 55 dogs with him, which he culled until he had 14 left when he returned from the pole. On the return trip, a man skied ahead of the dogs and hid meat in the cairns to encourage them to run. == Sled dog breeds ==