North Greenland Eskimo Dog

Polaris was chosen as our model of this type because he has been considered the most perfect North Greenland Eskimo dog known. He shows the light color so prevalent among the dogs of the extreme north on both continents, and the marked depth and breadth of muzzle. This seems to be a characteristic of many Asiatic dogs, the Chow and Tibetan mastiff notably, and may point to an Asiatic connection with Greenland via the Polar ice or across Arctic America.

There is a heavy, pale buff, deep-jawed dog found along the Arctic coast of America from the eastern to the western extent of land.

No white man living has had more experience with this breed than Admiral Robert E.
Peary, who frankly admits that if it had not been for the sledge dogs he never would have discovered the North Pole. lie is a firm believer in the pure-bred North Greenland Eskimo, which is practically a domesticated wolf, and most of the dogs which went to the Pole were of this type.

A puppy from these famous animals, secured by one of the coauthors of this article from Admiral Peary, was named "Polaris," and he developed into what Captain "Bob" Bartlett declared to be the finest living specimen of the breed.

Polaris weighed about 1OO pounds, but looked much larger, owing to his wonderful coat, which at its best measured nine inches long on the shoulder. The hair of the tail was 12 1/2 inches long. He took to the sledge and to the pack-saddle without any training whatever, and pulled a sledge three miles through deep snow the first time he was put in harness.

He was extremely gentle and affectionate with people and with a little Scotch terrier of ours, but a devil incarnate toward everything else that walked, flew, or swam. From grasshoppers and wild mice, through cats and pigs to sheep and cattle, there was nothing he could not or did not kill. Yet such was the magic of his smile, the twinkle of his eye, and the wheedling wave of his tail, that no one would believe anything against him unless he was caught in the act, which he usually wasn't.

He was finally presented to Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, and celebrated his arrival in Labrador by whipping every other dog in sight.

From The Book of Dogs: An Intimate Study of Mankind's Best Friend By National Geographic Society (U.S.), Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Ernest Harold Baynes Published 1919. 109 pages Original from Harvard University.

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