Dogs to the Rescue

 

By Suzanne Norquist

Every year, the Iditarod dog sled race begins on the first Saturday of March and can take three weeks to complete. So, the race is in full swing now.

https://iditarod.com/# gives all kinds of information about the race.

Siberian huskies are often used as sled dogs because of their thick, double coat and muscular frame. I have two of the rambunctious canines. Mine wouldn’t know what to do if they were hitched to a sled. They are more like lapdogs. Still, they require two walks and average 25,000 steps per day. Walking my furbabies in the snow prompted me to explore the history of dog sledding.

The oldest archeological evidence of dog sledding has been dated to around 1,000 A.D. As far as researchers can tell, it began with native people in northern Canada. Early sleds used fewer dogs and pulled minimal cargo, possibly firewood and other supplies. Human survival in the Arctic north may not have been possible without this form of transportation.

The late 1800s and early 1900s were nicknamed the “Era of the Sled Dog,” possibly because non-native people began settling in Arctic areas.

The Yukon’s Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1800s drew prospectors north to inhospitable areas. And in the early 1900s, they moved into the Alaskan interior. Dog teams carried supplies and mail to places other forms of transportation couldn’t reach.

Denali National Park has maintained a team of sled dogs since 1922. Their website is full of fun dog pictures with profiles of all the dogs. There are even dog team trackers.

https://www.nps.gov/dena/planyourvisit/meet-the-sled-dogs.htm

The diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska, in 1925, brought international attention to this form of transportation. A relay of dog teams carried life-saving serum seven hundred miles over the frozen Arctic terrain. It took six days for the serum to reach Nome.

Two of the most well-known sled dogs, Balto and Togo, led teams in this effort. Disney immortalized both Siberian huskies in movies. Balto led the team on the 53-mile final leg of the relay.

Although Togo led teams 264 miles of the journey, his contribution wasn’t recognized until much later. A movie telling his story was produced in 2019. After the run, kennel owner Leonhard Seppala’s dogs and their descendants were in high demand. (On a side note, my dogs are Seppala huskies, part of the working dog line, as opposed to the show dog line.)

The Iditarod race honors the dogs and mushers from that critical, life-saving run. The route runs from Anchorage to Nome, roughly one thousand miles.

Racing existed before the serum run and has likely always been a casual sport. Formal events took place as early as 1850. In 1908, the first dog sled race took place in Nome.

In 1967, dog sled teams participated in the first Iditarod race. Events were well attended for the first few years, then interest waned. So, organizers revised the route, making the race longer and more grueling in 1973.

The existing trail runs from Anchorage to Nome. First, the dogs run 20 miles along the Alaskan Highway, giving people a chance to watch them. Then they are loaded into trucks and driven to the first part of the race.

Other countries have similar dogsled activities. For example, Norway's race, the Finnmarkslopet, started in 1981. It includes two races, one 310 miles and one 620 miles.

Today, snowmobiles and other means of transportation have largely replaced dogsled teams. However, the dogs still lead the pack in a few remote areas. A Danish military special forces team patrols with dogsleds, as do the rangers in Denali National Park. Remote parts of Greenland still use dogs as their primary form of transportation.

As the dogs race this March, it’s fun to remember the history they represent.

 

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”Mending Sarah’s Heart” in the Thimbles and Threads Collection

Four historical romances celebrating the arts of sewing and quilting.

Mending Sarah’s Heart by Suzanne Norquist

Rockledge, Colorado, 1884

Sarah seeks a quiet life as a seamstress. She doesn’t need anyone, especially her dead husband’s partner. If only the Emporium of Fashion would stop stealing her customers, and the local hoodlums would leave her sons alone. When she rejects her husband’s share of the mine, his partner Jack seeks to serve her through other means. But will his efforts only push her further away?

For a Free Preview, click here: http://a.co/1ZtSRkK

Suzanne Norquist is the author of two novellas, “A Song for Rose” in A Bouquet of Brides Collection and “Mending Sarah’s Heart” in the Thimbles and Threads Collection. Everything fascinates her. She has worked as a chemist, professor, financial analyst, and even earned a doctorate in economics. Research feeds her curiosity, and she shares the adventure with her readers. She lives in New Mexico with her mining engineer husband and has two grown children. When not writing, she explores the mountains, hikes, and attends kickboxing class.

She authors a blog entitled, Ponderings of a BBQ Ph.D.

 

Medieval Pets and a GIVEAWAY!

As an animal lover it's easy for me to find a rabbit trail in historical research when it deals with animals. My husband and I have been forced to be away from home for an extended amount of time due to a clinical trial and that has left both him and me missing our four-legged friends. 

Kennedy doing her morning bible study.

 
So as you can imagine when I stumbled across Medieval pets in my research for my sequel, Sword of Trust, it had me at pets! We often have been told that medieval people did not have animals for pets, but in my research I'm finding that wasn't always the case. If we go back even further to bible times we find they had pets even in the Old Testament times. In II Samuel 12:3 we read: but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.  That sounds very much like a pet to me!

Winchester: Can I go for a ride? PLEASE mom??

Jump forward to Medieval times again. Dogs were used for many purposes, hunting and protection being the most common. But Dogs as well as other animals were kept as pets. However, not without criticism. Keeping a pet was considered frivolous and a waste of food that could have gone to feed the poor. It's easy to understand this when so many of the peasants didn't have enough food to feed their family. 
 

Aiden: You want me to do WHAT?

None-the-less some people chose to keep pets anyway. Monks and more often nuns chose to keep dogs, cats and birds as pets. The church, unable to ban them from doing so did request that they limit the number they kept and asked they not take them into the church. (That really sounds like a pet! My animals never get to attend church service with me.)

Cats were another animal that were used for working purposes. As you can imagine they were used as mousers and to keep the number of other vermin under control. But cats as dogs were kept outside of the working animal as pets. Although they certainly weren't found in every home or even as much as people today have pets, they were kept for the owners entertainment and companionship. We even have medieval paintings with people and their pets.




While dogs and cats don't seem like odd pets, parrots and singing birds were another desired pet in medieval times. More unusual animals that I found reference to as being kept as pets were, monkeys, squirrels, and even badgers. 

In my upcoming sequel, Sword of Trust, I have a faithful dog, a pet cat, and a needy squirrel. I plan to have much fun writing these little characters into my story.  

 

Giveaway: To enter to win your choice of a copy of one of my books, my new release, Shattered Memories or my medieval, Sword of Forgiveness, tell me what is your favorite pet and why or tell me why you'd like to read one of my books. Don't forget to leave your email with your comment so I can contact you if you win. For extra entries share this post on FB and/or Twitter and let me know you shared. Ends 5/13

The Charleston earthquake has left destruction like nothing Doctor Andrew Warwick has ever seen. On a desperate mission to find the lady who owns his heart, he frantically searches through the rubble, where he finds her injured and lifeless. After she regains consciousness, the doctor’s hopes are quickly dashed as he realizes she doesn’t remember him. Things only get worse when he discovers she believes she’s still engaged to the abusive scoundrel, Lloyd Pratt. Now Drew is on a race with the wedding clock to either help her remember or win her heart again before she marries the wrong man.

Waking in a makeshift hospital, Olivia Macqueen finds herself recovering from a head injury. With amnesia stealing a year of her memories, she has trouble discerning between lies and truth. When her memories start returning in bits and pieces, she must keep up the charade of amnesia until she can find out the truth behind the embezzlement of her family’s business while evading the danger lurking around her.

Debbie Lynne Costello has enjoyed writing stories since she was eight years old.

She raised her family and then embarked on her own career of writing the stories that had been begging to be told. She and her husband have four children and live in upstate South Carolina. She has worked in many capacities in her church and is currently the Children’s director. Debbie Lynne has shown and raised Shetland sheepdogs for eighteen years and still enjoys litters now and then. In their spare time, She and her husband enjoy camping and riding their Arabian and Tennessee Walking horses. Visit Debbie Lynne at www.debbielynnecostello.com, www.theswordandspirit.blogspot.com,  https://www.facebook.com/debbielynnecostello , https://plus.google.com/+DebbieLynneCostello/posts, and https://twitter.com/DebiLynCostello

Love in the Lead: Working Dogs

Love in the Lead: Working Dogs

“Gentlemen, I give you the German Shepherd…” writes Dorothy Eustis in the November 5, 1929 Saturday Evening Post in an article that has changed the lives of tens of thousands of blind and visually impaired persons for nearly eighty-five years. In that world-changing article, Ms. Eustis didn’t simply give us the German Shepherd; she gave us The Seeing Eye Dog.

Laurie Alice and yellow Labrador retriever, Bobbin, before their graduation
from Guide Dogs outside Portland, Oregon in 2003

Dogs have been used as working animals for thousands of years. Ancient peoples used dogs to pull sledges or turn spits for roasting meat. Sailors used dogs to jump into the water and retrieve objects fallen overboard or help pull in nets. And, of course, dogs have been used to guard and protect and even fight in wars. But possibly the noblest of callings for a dog is the service dog to persons with disabilities.

Ms. Eustis witnessed dogs being trained for aid to blinded German soldiers after World War I, and began to develop the idea of this benefiting blind persons in general. She worked with training in Switzerland until, fully convinced, she wrote her article and introduced the United States to the concept of dogs that could be trained to guide persons who are blind or visually impaired.

After that article in the Saturday Evening Post, a young blind man named Morris Frank contacted Ms. Eustis and asked for her to train him with a dog. She took him to Switzerland, where he received “Kiss” a German shepherd female. Appalled at the name, Frank renamed her “Buddy”. Buddy and Frank trained together, returned to the US, and stayed together as a working team until Buddy could no longer work.

Morris Frank and Buddy

During that time, The Seeing Eye training got underway. At first, the trainers went to different parts of the country to train the dogs and the people. Then they opened a campus. That campus moved a couple of times before it settled in its current location outside historic Morristown, New Jersey.

Nick’s official ID picture after finishing training from
The Seeing Eye in 2008 outside Morristown, NJ

 Meanwhile, other training schools opened up. Leader Dogs for the Blind http://www.leaderdog.org in Rochester, Michigan, in 1938, (sponsored by the Lions Clubs), Guide Dogs of San Rafael http://www.guidedogs.com in San Rafael, California, in 1942, and Guiding Eyes for the Blind http://www.guidingeyes.org in 1954. Others schools exist and come and go, and these are the four most prominent schools.

Through the work of the schools, their supporters, and alumni, laws have been enacted to give persons with service dogs access to public accommodations such as restaurants, stores, and transportation. Even more so, it allows blind persons to travel more safely and with greater confidence across farmland and through city streets.

Puppies are born at or near the training facilities, then raised by families to socialize them until they are around twelve, to eighteen months or older. Then they arrive at the school where they live in kennels and work with trainers to learn their work. This is like doggy university. When they graduate from that training, they are then paired with a blind person needing the dog for mobility purposes. The blind person spends two to four weeks training with the dog before going home, where the true training and bonding takes place.

Now dogs are used to help persons with all sorts of disabilities from autistic children, to persons in wheelchairs, to those with hearing impairments and deafness.

Laurie Alice and Nick taking a walk on the beach at South Padre Island, Texas

(Note: These dogs are free to the users, and training costs as much as $60,000.00 per dog.)

For further depth into the fascinating story of how this highly scientific and love-based work has developed, find a copy of Love Leads the Way, or find a copy of the movie Love in the Lead. Warning if you do this research, however, make sure you have lots of tissues on hand.