Sawmill Museum Blog: Companions In A Desolate Place: Dogs & Their 'Jacks

I bet the first animal that comes to your mind when you think of a lumberjack is a big blue ox, or maybe a horse. Yet, dogs were a constant companion for the lumberjacks -- often as a helper or the camp mascot. Sometimes a dog or an animal ceased being of this world, like the Hodag-- which has no relation to a dog outside of a claim that its name means horse dog. What follows will be mostly a look into the lives of dogs in lumber camps. However, like so much in the Northwoods, you can learn most of about the reality by examining the folk stories and songs that permeated throughout the camp.

An amazing caption from Explore Rhinelander

Most of the accessible stories show that dogs were mainly used for transportation on site. Joe Lefebvre's shares a story in Donald MacKay's The Lumberjack, about using a team of dogs to deliver 200 loads of wood, most likely cords, a quarter of a mile one winter. The dogs were beneficial because the lumberjacks were cutting in swamp in Quebec. Horses would sink. Dogs could make it through. Later Joe had an accident. It was the team of dogs that made the 70 mile dash to safety (Mackay, 293).

In fact, it sounds like the use of dogsleds rose out of multiple strains of need. In the entry "Lumberjack Sky Pilots" on Mnopedia.org, Frank Higgins, a minister who would visit the camps, would in addition to saving souls would attempt to save lives and limbs. Frank would bring injured lumbermen into town. "After a particularly long and bumpy toboggan ride," Frank came up with using dogs "as a dog-drawn ambulance."

Frank Higgins and his dog sled as found on http://www.mnopedia.org/multimedia/frank-higgins

In addition to saving other animals from toil and saving humans, dogs would save machines as well. In the early 1900's, machines often wouldn't like the elements and as lumberjack Paul Provencher mentioned, what would you do if a part was needed in the dead of winter. The answer he had was dog teams. Paul even deduced a perceived advantage that could exploited. If you put a dog in heat as the lead dog, Paul could "exploit the sex life of those dogs" to gain an hour by making the other dogs chase a little harder and quicker (MacKay, 68).

Dogs were central in the camp because for thousands of years, in addition to being great workers, the dogs made great pets. Many lumber camps had a small dog as a "camp mascot dog." In fact, one of the more famous camp mascot dogs, Sport-the-Reversible Dog, combined the mythical folklore of the lumberjacks with practical needs.