Eulogy to the Husky
With Thanks to The Book That Wasn’t – Rick Atkinson and Jonathan Walton
My arrival in the Antarctic in 1947, at the age of 20, was as much due to finding an alternative to marrying an older woman (aged 21) as having a Boys Own Paper view of the heroic age of Scott and Shackleton.
As I had service experience as a meteorologist I was, theoretically, an ideal candidate to opt out of civilisation for a couple of years. What was not made clear to me at my interview was that I would be in danger of falling into another, more lasting, relationship with the most magnificent and independent of animals – the Husky.
I was being posted to an island base which, amongst other things, specialised in breeding and training sledge dogs for the ongoing expedition. I was fortunate to have some advice from a pre-war expedition dog handler, Bill Slessor, who later became an eminent gynaecologist! He lulled me into a sense of false security claiming that Huskies were friendly and obedient animals who responded to the work of command with no problems. I soon discovered that the only honest adjective was “friendly”.
Our 4-man base had a complement of 40 dogs and puppies of which only 50% had been sledge trained. Our only advice from the outgoing base members was “Read Doc Slessor’s book and watch out for ‘King’, he’s a bastard”. But someone had “lifted ” the book as a souvenir, and we couldn’t find a pedigree for our pack leader. From then on meteorology took second place to the dogs.
The first unpleasant surprise was to discover how much food 30 dogs could eat. Their staple diet was seal meat and they could demolish a dissected carcass in 4 days. It would be a year before we were relieved and so we calculated that we needed to catch and kill 90 seals to see us through – frightening statistics. It was late autumn and within a month the sea would start to freeze while the seals withdrew to warmer waters. We had been left very little reserves of dog food by way of seal carcasses so we became instant expert sailors, marksmen and butchers.
Once the sea ice formed and was thick enough to sledge on our work proper commenced. With miles of sea ice to choose from we thought it would be straightforward to harness up and drive a team of dogs, but there were problems. Sea ice around the islands is not flat and is very uncomfortable to cross. Huskies are very independent when driven by a rookie handler. The resulting chaos often meant a long walk back to base to find 10 happy dogs sitting there, laughing their- heads off!
By trial and error we gradually worked out a mutually acceptable arrangement. Providing we didn’t ask the dogs to do anything unreasonable they would go along with our inexperience and show us how to operate. As for breaking in the puppies we could do no better than putting them alongside their mother’s in harness. If they did not perform they received a sharp nip on the rump.Within a couple of months we had three teams operational and were able lo carry out fairly extensive sledging journeys. Surprisingly we found that bitches often made the best team leaders. While they were smaller they were more intelligent than their male counterparts and could ‘read’ the surface without a great deal of assistance from the sledge drivers. They could not handle deep snow as they were too light to push a route through.
Strong bonding built up between the dogs and their handlers. Each dog has a distinctive character and we each had our favourite. Mine was a young lady called Polly, who was the smallest and most intelligent of all the dogs. She came back with me to the U.K. together with 30 other dogs to perform at the Festival of Britain. Tragically she died of “hardpad” (a virulent strain of distemper). Coming from the Antarctic her immune system could not handle this type of infection.
I shall always consider I was privileged to have the opportunity to work with these wonderful animals in their natural environment. Today, the only huskies left in the Antarctic are used as pets on the bases. What happened to the older woman? Well, that’s another story.
David Galton – Argentine Island 1947 – 49