When the winter comes to town and sportchannels broadcoast images of the sleddograces, being in Europe or the United States who has not , just for a moment, crawled into the skin of these mushers? Who hasn't dreamed of the big spaces? Alaska and his Iditarod, the Alpes,... all these big sleddograces of intarnational prominents. You have to know that without the headactors these races wouldn't take place : THE DOGS !
When you look at them, who hasn't seen the big cuddely bear in them with the blue eyes ? A sleddogteam is a union with the dogs included, the sled and the driver (musher). The relationship that is between man and dog is a priviliged one. If the union is coherent the team will run the best out of itself, but if one of these elements is disturbed is it the union that feels but mostly the dogs get blamed. They will be pointed with the finger and being looked at with argus eyes.
They are marvelous with their external physiologue differences. Each of them love the pact and hates the lonelyness. Aswel as hountdogs as sleddogs has a commun behavior and instinct of their ancestor the wolf. (although there has never been seen a wolf with blue eyes) They respect the social hierarchy in the pact and speak among them through body language like for example the different expressions on their faces, the howling, subjection, challenging, invitiation to play...
The howling existes out of 5 different kinds : the wining, the crunching, the complaining the barking and the howl
* the complaints and the crunching expresses subjection
* the complaining expresses different kinds of agression
* The barking very rare exept for Samoyeeds expresse
exitement
Concerning the howling it is a way of expressing themselves among the different Nordic dogbreeds and a lot of their secret why is being kept among them. Although the ritual is always the same. The dogs come together in group and start wagging their tail softely and raises their mouth to the sky by stretching their neck. Every howl will last from 1 to 3 minutes and will stop after 3 minutes, the dogs take their breath rest for about 20 minutes and start over again.
This howling plays a very important rol in the pact and is the confirmation of each dog of their territory. The body language of the dog can also being devided in categories. So we can see the subjection (laying on their back, paw in the air and vonarable throat), the challenging ( they provoce the members of the pact, the dogs makes itself bigger and raises the hair on their back).
When the relation among the pact is not good there can be some fight among the dogs but these fights rarely lead to dead because the lower dog in the pact will submit hisself to the higher placed dog.
In the pact there is a strict hierarchy among nordic breeds. The leader is that dog that is physically aswel as mentally the strongest. According to the other breeds, the nordic dogbreeds are probably the ones that have remained closed to the original dogs.
there are 4 different nordic breeds
