The Incredible Life Of A Sled Dog (Wildlife Documentary) | Natural Kingdom | Real Wild

[Music] [Music] there is an inuit legend still told in the north about a girl who was forced by her father to marry her dog soon after she gave birth to a great litter of children half human and half dog the girl loved her children but craved revenge for being forced to marry one day when her father brought the meat she cried out eat him my children the litter obeyed devouring him now with no one to feed them the dog children would have to hunt to survive some travelled inland and became the red man others went east and became the white man the rest moved north and became the inuit the girl and her dog husband remained behind and having no meat they starved to death of all the animals who live in the most hostile environment on earth only one has made the difference between man's survival and extinction this is the story of the ancient essential relationship between man and the only domestic animal in the arctic for thousands of years the canadian inuit dog the dog we call a husky has adapted to survive the worst excesses of both the weather and man in a frozen northern galapagos an arctic explorer once wrote no other animal in the world has to suffer so much from hunger while having to toil daily to the very limit of its endurance [Music] such is life for the working dog of the midnight sun at the end of the last ice age the land bridge between asia and north america disappeared but the ancestors of the inuit were an ingenious maritime people who crossed the open water in skin boats with them came their dog rather than turned south the inuit chased the arctic coastline for 200 years they wandered eastward until they could go no further the word inuit means the living ones who are here and here in the high arctic over 40 centuries ago one journey ended and another began the inuit have a saying that a hunter without dogs is only half a hunter as aggressive partners in the hunt dogs would surround the polar bear and hold it at bay until it was killed at close range [Music] musk ox were herded into their defensive circle and then slaughtered caribou were wounded and then pursued run down and killed by the dogs his uncanny sense of smell was essential to finding the seal's breathing hole hidden under thick snow narwhal and walrus harpooned in open water were dragged on shore by the dogs a successful hunt meant meat for everyone failure spelled starvation about a thousand years ago the inuit dog's strength and stamina were finally harnessed to the sled soon new legends began to be told about the pulling machine of the north suddenly the arctic ice unpredictably cracked wide open the dog children of the east had returned the white man had learned of the inuit from the ojibwa of labrador who called them meaning eaters of raw flesh the name evolved to become eskimo then esky and finally husky for the inuit dog the arrival of the white man was the beginning of a long nightmare as the white man flooded the north he brought his own dogs with him infectious diseases to which the inuit dog had no resistance killed thousands more ominous was rampant crossbreeding with southern dogs which threatened to contaminate the entire breed by the end of the gold rush in the more accessible western arctic the inuit dog had become extinct but in the eastern arctic where isolation remained impregnable to progress the dog maintained its pure bloodline and its dominance as a working dog well into the 20th century and then the north changed forever on the north coast of baffin island a thousand people live in the community of pond inlet only 40 years ago there was nothing here but a police outpost and a solitary church by 1960 relocation of the inuit people into communities scattered across the arctic was at its height at the same time the snowmobile appeared fast efficient and cheap to operate the snowmobile quickly replaced the working dog making it a useless liability in a modern arctic mercifully many dogs were shot many more were simply chained to the sea ice and forgotten once there were over 20 000 purebred inuit dogs in the arctic by 1970 less than 200 remained [Music] the wolf-like howl of the wild once echoed loudly across the barrens today it is a rarely heard lament as rare as the breed itself [Music] the inuits say that the better the weather the more dangerous the north becomes but after three months of virtual darkness and seven months of sub-zero cold spring has returned to breathe new life into the land [Music] like the polar bear and the caribou animals hardened by centuries of arctic adaptation these inuit dogs have weathered another winter on three meter thick sea ice outside of pond inlet soon the pack will be let loose on a nearby island to fend for themselves foraging for fish carcass and small game it will be the only time when they're truly free these are charlie and your axe stars charlie is a rare breed himself one of a few inuit hunters in the area to maintain a purebred team of sled dogs and use them in the traditional way and i have to have my children and my family survive along with my dogs because that is my life dogs are part of our lives they are part of the land they're part of the landscape charlie's wife always worries when he hunts by snowmobile but traveling with his dogs she knows he will always find his way home [Applause] [Music] so the purebred inuit dog is the product of a harsh ancient process of natural selection where dogs with any physical or social defects were destroyed in the arctic a defective dog is a dangerous dog and a liability to the whole team on the barons only strength and endurance matter and this dog is a weightlifter not a sprinter in fact dog sled racing is a sacrilege a sport for bizarre crossbreeds which usually includes a dash of greyhound the inuit dog is neither big nor heavy but a balance dictated by the ruthless environment males average 38 kilograms and stands 62 centimeters at the shoulder females are about 20 percent lighter and 10 shorter giving them a distinct survival advantage females also tend to be the best lead dogs out front the lead dog is the quickest and most responsive to voice commands setting the pace changing direction and inspiring the team to pull i i i i [Music] oh [Music] when the hunt is over the dogs are always the first to be fed the inuit dog is naturally carnivorous and eats raw meat and fish exclusively this makes the inuit dog closer to wild canyons like the wolf or coyote than any other dog [Music] watching an inuit dog eat gives a new meaning to the term fast food amazing qualities of food can disappear down his throat in seconds meat skin guts bones it will consume everything except the liver of the polar bear or fresh shark meat which is toxic the dog must possess a genetic memory of starvation because it is capable of digesting any animal product that's available skin clothing kayak covers rope leather boots even its own harness in times of extreme food shortage it might even turn on its own its preferred and normal food however comes from sea mammals like seal or walrus high in vitamins protein and fat contents of over 60 percent this diet would kill any other domestic dog the inuit dog can survive for days weeks even months without food but they must have water fortunately in the arctic there is no lack of ice or snow dogs have been known to die from overeating after an extended food shortage but if they're fed on average once every two days then as charlie says they will take you there and back guaranteed [Music] man [Music] long long ago the dog of an inuit hunter died his master mourned him and vowed that one day they would be reunited in heaven down the coast another dog died from beatings and starvation this inuit hunter cursed his dog in death because now he would have to drag the sled back home alone the two dogs met in heaven the first dog kept looking towards the earth waiting for his master to join him while the second dog was ready to run and hide together they agreed to guard the gates of heaven and whenever the soul of a hunter who had loved his dogs arrived he would be greeted with wagging tails and allowed to enter but the hunter who had beaten his dogs would be turned away by growls and snarls and forced to wander forever over the endless white ice the relationship between man and the arctic's only domestic animal is a confusing paradox here survival of the fittest may be nature's way but survival of the friendliest must be man's way these are ken mccrory's dogs ken is a leading authority on the inuit dog from his home in iqaluit he has studied the dog for 20 years and traveled over 35 000 kilometers with his own dog teams stop it stop it stop that well there's no question about it that the dogs can be very aggressive to each other they're a product of a very hostile environment but normally if they are not socialized and handled by humans from a very early age approximately three weeks i say they will become quite wild and unmanageable to breed the best possible partner for the hunt the inuit encouraged aggressive behavior in their dog but within their partnership there was no place for a wild dog an abnormal aggression was immediately killed off in the past dogs were never tied up allowing them to interact freely and naturally with both man and the pack any dog that would not come when called was either starved or shot in the modern arctic by law all dogs must be chained up creating a situation especially amongst younger males where aggression is stockpiled ready to explode at any moment there are stories that constantly circulate about the dogs attacking and killing people and that is in fact something that does happen it is almost exclusively children or in a few cases it is seniors over 65 years of age and i think there's something there that the dogs are acting out their predatory instincts [Laughter] when the white man saw an inuit dog for the first time they thought it was part wolf in fact all dogs evolved from wolves but only this dog acts like mine when raised as a pack inuit dogs settle into a hierarchy identical to wolves the pack is a family unit with rankings based on strength not seniority fighting between young males is fierce but rarely fatal except when the appropriate submissive behavior is not displayed at the right time if a challenge continues several adults will step in and kill the upstart [Music] in the wolf pack only the dominant alpha male and female mate but the entire pack nurtures and protects the litter in the inuit dog pack all will mate and if more than one litter is born at the same time chaos and cannibalism may soon follow the killing of pups by aggressive males seeking to establish territorial dominance or by females attempting to increase the food supply of their own litter is common the female raises her pups alone and is extremely protective challenging any male regardless of size who comes too close even a pup who has died of natural causes will be fiercely protected [Music] if pups can survive to six weeks their growth rate accelerates and by six months they have the size and strength to survive their first arctic winter and to start muscling their way into the pack hierarchy within a dog hierarchy like in ken mccrory's team the alpha male or boss dog rules the pack for this position no training is required life at the top is perilous but it does have its benefits like the first serving of fresh walrus flipper the boss dog is selected by the dog through a combination of size or aggression or or or maybe birthright this dog will be the boss i make sure that the boss dog has an opportunity to display dominance to the other dogs and but at the same time i let him know that i'm fully his boss and then i don't have to worry about any of the other ones he'll take care of them although he is the largest and strongest a good boss dog rarely starts a fight but is always prepared to finish one and rarely will the boss dog make a good lead dog when the team is harnessed he will step aside and allow the lead dog to take its place however off the sled it is brawn not brains the dominants hi boy how you doing huh let's have a look at that foot oh yeah look your claws are growing again boy i gotta cut them again hairy feet yep there you go cut see any cuts around your ears you get cuts because your brother chews on your head sometimes i definitely think of them as animals and as working animals but that doesn't mean to say that you can't have a relationship with them they are definitely not pets though and i don't treat them like bats they don't come in the house they eat raw meat they live outdoors at 40 below zero and i try to keep them as much as possible in a traditional manner look good for a six-year-old dog you got pretty good teeth that's every day [Music] a thousand miles south of the arctic circle minnesota is a long way from home but if you point the dog north it's a good bet he'll make it home probably without stopping [Music] these are paul sherkey's dogs paul is also a rare breed a modern-day arctic explorer whose dogs have pulled him to the north pole five times more than any man in history the ability and the drive to pull is locked in there so deeply it only needs a little bit of tweaking for that instinct to kick in you can actually see it happen when these puppies uh are about eight months old will harness them up alongside seasoned veterans and off they go and they'll kind of get pulled along and get twisted and tangled for the first few hundred yards and then suddenly boom it's like a light goes off in their head perfect day for dog sledding summers are cool in minnesota but for the dogs this is still a banana belt other than their tongues and feet pads the inuit dog has no sweat glands another arctic adaptation paul runs his dogs only if the temperature's right to keep muscles stretched and the team socialized in preparation for the job ahead [Music] like the call of the wild the north pole has beckoned explorers for centuries it is the perfect place to take an inuit dog and foolish to go without them in april of 1986 along with co-leader will steger an international team five sleds and 49 inuit dogs paul shirkey began his first trek to the pole i don't know if any one of those expeditions would have interest me in the least had it not been done in the company of sled dogs the mystique of being engaged with a team of dogs where your survival and well-being is so closely interlinked with theirs and a huge measure of the reward that comes from those tracks is seeing that the dogs thrive in their native environments ahead lay 500 kilometers of buckled sea ice windstorms whiteouts and the unpredictability of a land made only of ice it was indeed a typical environment for the inuit dog [Music] they are true machines and they're just pulling fools they get in a harness and boom you could do 26 30 hour days and they'd never stop the colder the better as far as the dogs are concerned during the working day uh of course we've been out there with them pulling in temperatures that have exceeded 70 below zero fahrenheit and they don't miss a beat [Music] 56 days after their journey began shurkey's team made history as the first unsupported expedition by dogsled to reach the north pole amongst them was the first woman to reach the pole and bancroft it's a great day for us we are deeply indebted to the 49 huskies and canadian eskimo dogs who pulled us so long and hard to bring us here at the top of the world they are the real heroes of this journey paul scherke's run to the poll followed in the footsteps of the greatest explorer of the 20th century commander robert e perry had spent 20 years in the arctic and knew the full value of the inuit dog in 1909 on his third attempt to reach the north pole he took 246 dogs with him not all were destined to return as supplies dwindled and fewer dogs were needed to pull the sleds the surplus were fed to his men and the remaining dogs one by one the weaker dogs were culled and consumed after a grueling three-month journey only 52 dogs remained on june 10th perry wrote in his diary that he had finally reached the pole a claim that has never been confirmed [Music] two years later in 1911 the great race to reach the south pole first became a contest between norway's raul lamunson and robert scott of great britain like perry amundsen understood that dogs were invaluable to polar travel and set out with 52 of them scott chose to use ponies instead and when these died in the antarctic blizzards he and his men were left with no choice but to pull the sleds themselves amunson reached the south pole first hoisted his flag and returned to his base camp a thousand kilometers away with 11 dogs the other 41 like perry's had been killed and consumed a month later scott reached the pole to find a munson's flag on the return journey exhausted from pulling the sleds weakened by lack of food and only 15 kilometers short of their base camp scott and his team perished [Music] paul shurky's kennel in ely minnesota is home to 60 purebred inuit dogs he breeds them solely as working dogs for polar exploration and a new phenomena explorography the science of taking an adventure rather than a vacation in the spring of 1999 paul made his fifth journey to the north pole with a group who paid for the experience appropriately it was the last expedition of the century called the great age of exploration i certainly will fight tooth and nail to ensure that there's a proper place for the eskimo dog in the 21st century and i think there will be but if there's not i'd rather not see the breed be obliged to carry on stuck on a chain in someone's backyard and never being allowed to do the thing which it loves most to do and that is to pull in the snow minnesota is a long way from home but for the working dog of the north paul shurkey has found a new place for its legacy one that he fully intends to pass on to his own greed [Music] like the frigid drying winds that scour down from the pole to the naked eye the arctic is a constant a natural fortress against change yet it could not protect the canadian inuit dog over 100 years ago canada's official dog registry the canadian kennel club recognized the inuit dog as a pure indigenous breed in 1966 the last litter to be registered was born and in 1976 only one sterile male remained on their list what nature could not do disease technology and cross breeding had at least officially defeated [Music] to some the disappearance of a living cultural icon and an inseparable part of the arctic landscape was unthinkable and a desperate search began to confirm or deny the demise of the canadian inuit dog [Applause] the inuit call him the dog man in 1975 bill carpenter a biologist based in yellowknife embarked on a personal crusade to find the last survivors of a once proud now dying breed his journey took two years searching the remote eastern arctic where some inuit still lived the way of the land here carpenter found 41 dogs isolated from the juggernaut of progress and whose genetic makeup remained pure to the breed these are bill carpenter's dogs bill returned to yellowknife and began a controlled breeding program with his 41 survivors what this project is all about is that we are breeding back the indigenous aboriginal breed of dogs that was with the thule culture of inuit this male here he's an exceptional dog he'll be one of the stud dogs used in the first generation breeding program he's only six months old now he just about reached his full growth ahead lay the task of producing at least three generations before the breed could again be registered and bill could claim that the inuit dog had been saved [Music] food was a major problem the dogs were ravenous eating 70 tons of it a year several times the project was put in jeopardy due to the threat of starvation but like his dogs carpenter persevered we're documenting all of the various characteristics and growth rates of these dogs which has never been really done before so they'll be registered again there's no reason that in two or three generations we won't have two or three hundred of them all registered and producing a original line of dogs again from the from this part of the north in 1986 10 years after bill began his crusade the inuit dog was again registered with the canadian kennel club but his success remains perilous over the years bill had sent hundreds of dogs back to the inuit only to have them disappear as casualties of crossbreeding but others have endured to become a living reminder to a new generation of inuit of their past and their future i used to talk to a lot of elders they would tell stories and that got me curious as to what a dog team would look like i wanted to see it for myself and actually live it part of my culture that i never saw when i was growing up and eventually i got my own team these are mika mike's dogs mikka mike owns an adventure tour company in iqaluit taking advantage of a new and long overdue interest in the north to her maintaining the purity of the inuit dog breed is both good for her soul and good for business i've never used a mixed breed before but joshua who is one of my guides that we go out together with our team he had mixed breed and he found even on a hot day like this they won't last as long as the pyramids today on the sea ice the temperature hovers around two degrees celsius in the arctic hot has always been gauged differently than in the south mika bred her dogs from a single female and the offspring both children and grandchildren now make up her team [Music] they're much similar to wolves in their social structure and how they act like the young ones that i have that i've been training for the past year and a half are now testing the older dogs and challenging them trying to figure out where they fit in a team [Music] for mika mike the inuit dog is an inseparable part of her own time and place now she has plans to build another dog team to meet the growing demands of northern [Music] tourism [Music] part of the northern experience is the dog team which our people have used for thousands of years the best thing i like is like last night it was pretty sunny peaceful no sound no motor sound and all you can hear is water splashing from the dogs running and the sled that's what i really enjoy [Music] [Music] hey [Music] after a three-hour trip by dog sled a group of sixth grade students has left a callaway behind for a more traditional classroom on the tundra for four days they'll learn about the land and its history but for the most part they'll learn about the inuit dog [Music] these are matty mcnair's dogs each spring for the past six years matty has brought school kids here to give them their first real experience with the dog of their ancestors [Music] the kids were asking me more about what kind of dog this was and for them they they call all these dogs husky dogs they don't really see a difference between one that's half german shepherd and half a canadian eskimo dog they're all husky dogs to them along with her husband paul matty owns an adventure tour company and 29 inuit dogs the largest team in the region she too has traveled thousands of kilometers by dog sled and in 1997 led the first all-women's expedition to the north pole it is because of her dogs that she has also become a teacher in the beginning the children are very hesitant they're very afraid of dogs you would think that there's so many dogs around they wouldn't be but actually they are quite afraid of the dogs they don't know them and i bring the puppies along so that they can sort of interact with the puppies and learn more about how dogs interact [Music] for most inuit children the sled dog is both an ancient relic and a modern mystery the snowmobile is all they know and it doesn't bite for these kids the best way to learn about the inuit dog is to experience it and then let them figure out the rest for themselves and when we come into kamari it's very vulnerable it might take two of you to hold on to because they just love pulling and they love pulling you too they won't bite you they're very friendly they're just very excited and they want you to hurry up so maybe two of you bring them up to their harness all right let's go up to the harness and after they've gone over and harnessed the dogs and they realized that the dog is just trying to lick them or sniff them they're not trying to bite them they start to relax more and by the end of the four days oh the kids are all going over and getting dogs and bringing them over and putting them into harness and that's really wonderful okay in a region where 56 of the population are under the age of 25 living on the land is an important experience for these kids and the dog to share if the inuit dog does have a future it will be this generation who decides for now their first contact is nothing less than a real life lesson about the wild unpredictable land they call home [Music] this dog is enthusiastic or overly enthusiastic about everything it's as if this dog has really a foot in the wild but they're also a domesticated dog and and working with them is recognizing that they are both some things about the arctic will never change and some things always will in a land both endless and unequivocal life goes on like its master the canadian inuit dog has proven adaptable to change but never again will it dominate as the working sled dog of the north that time is gone forever today the inuit dog is hunted by the future a future that may well be its past strict purebred breeding will protect it but without purpose as a working dog it will cease to be an inuit dog since the dawn of time man's presence in the arctic owes its existence to the canadian inuit dog a debt that deserves to be honored before the midnight sun sets for the last time on the most loyal animal in nature and only the legend remains i am standing by the gates of heaven the dogs waited and whenever the soul of a good hunter who had loved his dogs approached he was greeted with wagging tails and allowed to enter but the hunter who had beaten his dogs was turned away by growls and stars and forced to wander forever over the endless white ice [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real Wild

Views: 22,825

Rating: 4.7659035 out of 5

Keywords: full documentary, wildlife documentary, wild animal, real wild, animal documentary, animals, canadian inuit dog, canadian inuit documentary, canadian inuit movies, canadian inuit sled dog, sled dogs, sled dogs run, sled dogs documentary, sled dogs howling, sled dogs sleeping in snow

Id: vxvHYawDMDo

Length: 45min 38sec (2738 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021