a short afternoon break from their skiing holiday in destinations such as Whistler, Canada, to multi-day tours that are often operated as a sideline by those professional mushers who race in events such as the Quest and Iditarod (Coppinger, 1977; Evans, 2008). Examples of dog mushing holidays abound on the Internet across the snowscapes of Canada, the USA and Europe. The dogs have also become a tourist attraction in their own right as some tours now offer people the chance to get up close with the pups in their enclosures as seen in Fig. 2.2. Such an activity, while undoubtedly attractive to the tourist, serves an important purpose for the development of the dog. Through the constant attention they are given by a continuous stream of visitors they become accustomed to the human contact that is an integral part of the sled dog tourism experience, as differentiated from the life of the working sled dog. While it may be argued that only sociable dogs make the grade in this form of sled dog work, it is true that the dogs who get to meet and greet the visitors thoroughly enjoy doing so and love the attention they receive in return.
Fig. 2.2. Puppy petting as part of a sled dog tour.
Today, dog sledding is a popular sport in many parts of the world, with reports of a team even being run on the beaches of Hawaii in the 1970s (Coppinger, 1977), and has its own international organization, the International Sled Dog Racing Association, which was founded in 1966 (Palmer, 1983). In North America the sport features a mix of happy amateurs and a strong professional contingent whereas in places such as Europe it is almost entirely a pastime of the amateur (Firth, 1998). The nature of the races also differs outside of the sled dogging spiritual home, with events tending to be across much shorter distances. This may be a reflection of the amateur status of most participants, the lack of history of sledding as a means of transport, differences in the amount of appropriate available space and different land access regulations. Within the context of this section, the important distinction between sled dog racing in Alaska and northern Canada, and elsewhere in the world, is that in the former it is clearly something that has stemmed from the use of sled dogs for work whereas in the latter it has only ever been a sport. Yet today it is a popular global sport with many countries running their own national championships and the existence of a European Championships since 1984 (Firth, 1998). Interestingly though it has yet to become a sport of the Winter Olympics despite having been a demonstration sport at the 1932 Olympics at Lake Placid (Firth, 1998).
It is interesting to see that sledding today is firmly associated in the minds of many with the Husky. Yet as Coppinger (1977) noted, some of the earliest sled dogs are likely to have been the ancestors of the modern Samoyed, though how much they are comparable to the Samoyed of today is open to debate. More recently, the early outdoorsmen and explorers of Canada and the northern states of the USA utilized basically any dogs they could find that had stamina and strength, with mongrels the most common among them (Coppinger, 1977). Furthermore, it is clear that throughout the history of the sport of sled dog racing almost every type of dog has been utilized either as part of a team or as an entire one, including – according to Coppinger (1977) – Walker Coonhounds, Border Collies, Scotch Collies, Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers, Pointers, Dalmatians, Airedales, German Shepherds, Belgian Shepherds, Doberman Pinschers and Weimaraners.
If you visit the dog sled operators of today you are unlikely to find many dogs who would meet the breed standards of a Husky, as defined by the Kennel Club, or any other northern breed. Indeed, my own experience of an operator in Austria in 2013 was that alongside Huskies he was running a couple of Husky/Collie crosses, arguing that the cross offered exemplar strength and endurance as well as being easier to train and more friendly towards guests of the business than pure Huskies. Similarly, the husband of a couple interviewed in Switzerland in 2013 who ran a sled dog tour operation had previously raced sled dogs with a team of collies at one stage and one mixed with 50% collies and 50% Huskies. The picture in Fig. 2.2 also clearly shows that sled dog operators do not always use Huskies though at the same time most advertise their businesses with pictures of this breed. It appears to have been the Europeans who most enthusiastically bought into the idealized image of the Husky as ‘the’ sled dog. For example, the Swiss Club for Northern Dogs, which was set up in 1959, restricted entry to its races to northern purebred dogs only, such as ‘the Siberian Husky, the Alaskan Malamute, the Bearhound, the Finnish Spitz, the Norwegian Elkhound and the Akita’ (Coppinger, 1977: 143).
Even though the search and rescue dogs are clearly working when out in search of lost people, there is a strong element of leisure in the whole experience of these dogs and their handlers, who tend to be volunteers (leaving aside for the moment the whole concept of whether the dog actually ‘volunteers’). With volunteering undertaken during one’s free time, for at least partially internally driven motivations and desires, it has been widely recognized as a form of leisure (Henderson, 1984; Stebbins, 1996). In this way, the meet and greet dogs at airports and their owners may be said to be engaging in leisure as much as work. This neatly exemplifies the problematic state of attempts to view leisure and work as a binary when the reality is clearly much more complex and dependent on the perception of the individual involved. However, in these instances it is not a case of the ‘individual’ involved, but of the individuals involved (i.e. the dog and its owner). Is the activity being engaged in by both felt as work, leisure or a mixture of both by both participants? This is a question that needs more detailed analysis to be able to answer but such work should be situated in the context of recognizing the ‘with’ nature of the relation between dogs and their owners and the social agency and of both.
In the blurring of the divide between work and leisure for dogs and arguably also for their owners (or handlers, given that dogs are not always owned by those who work with them daily) we see the potential for multiple meanings to be associated with dogs in any ‘one’ activity. For example, in the contemporary world of dog sledding the dog can be seen as object, tool, leisured creature (discussed in detail in Chapter 4) and leisure companion to humans. It has been suggested that work, or at least work in a quasi-form through sport, can be utilized as a means of giving dogs a value of self-worth. In an interview with Scotty Allan, one of the great early dog sled racers at the beginning of the 20th century, he stated: ‘Maybe it [the publicity stemming from his races and wins] will bring about a world-wide change in regard to dogs; change useless pets all over the earth into worthwhile, self-respecting animals – give them useful work. Dogs are like humans in that they are better off and happier if they have responsibilities’ (Garst, 1948: 4). This quotation is interesting in many ways for it shows Allan viewed dogs as sentient beings and sought ways to ensure their happiness. At the same time it shows the distain of this outdoorsman for anything so frivolous, in his view, as pets.
Overall, this chapter has aimed to show the diversity of the roles working dogs play in the leisure experience and how many of these roles have, over time, morphed into sport and leisure pursuits. In relation to the dogs, the dominant theme of the chapter has been of them as objects or tools that have been utilized by humans. In this way they fit the conceptualization of dogs as objects that was discussed in Chapter 1
