Eskimo Dog, a half-tamed variety widely distributed in the Arctic regions, and indispensable for drawing the sledges. They are strong and powerful, like shepherds' dogs in form, with long black and white, brown, or dingy white hair.
Often ill fed and overworked, they retain much of the original wildness of their wolf ancestry, and are subject to fatal epidemics and to hydrophobia. And as they are frequently fretful, quarrelsome, and unmanageable, they are not to be compared with reindeer as aids to man. Yet under favourable conditions dogs can do 40 miles a day at 7 miles an hour, drawing over 50 lb. for each dog. The Americans have brought reindeer from Siberia to supersede the dogs in Alaska.