Capt Max's book - Page 2

The Inuits I was referring to are all dead. I don't know why they thought some of their wolf dogs could be sterile. I read that in a book written many years ago.

Joanro you are right about the trainability of the wolf crosses. From a working sled dog standpoint they could be physically good, but their desire was lacking. About every kind of canine and crosses has been tried in sled dog racing including wolf, coyote, and dingo. There has not been a reproduction problem because the most successful cross has been to breed the animal in, than breed it out to about 25% or less. Not worth doing on a competitive scale.

A team of animals with high desire for the work always beat a team of excellent animals with a lower desire for the work. 

To be successful in sled dog sprint racing, 20 to 30 miles a day for two and three day heats, a team has to average about 20 miles an hour. Not many animals wild or domestic can accomplish this. Selective breeding for a purpose is hard to replace with an outcross.

Capt Max had a vision for the physical and mental desire of his work.  That is something that is very hard to fault.

The Inuits/Eskimos I read about were central - based wanderers 3 seasons of every year following the caribou, seal, and whale. They transported all their worldly  goods on sledges pulled by large, powerful freighting dogs.  Back then they did not use those dogs for racing and their descendents are not competitive today - Alaskan Malmutes are still classified as freighting dogs, not racing dogs.

Anyway, the legend is that some Eskimos wanted to bring in wolf blood to add more more stamina to their dogs so some staked out their bitches when they were in season hoping that they would be impregnated by a wolf while others who were concerned about sterility in the offspring did not. True or not? Maybe a white mans tale, I don't know. Any dog or wolf dog that didn't work out on a Inuit team was swiftly dispatched. It was the toughest life for man and beast.