Huskies in the Voges 1916

[centurion]

Just read a newspaper article written in July 1916 describing huskies in teams of five pulling light railway trucks in the Vosges. They appear to have been brought in from either the Yukon or Alaska and taking to the job very enthusiastically. One problem was that the dogs had been trained to respond to commands in English (with a pronounced North American accent) which the French soldiers in charge didn't speak and needed to be trained to do so. An interesting comment was that initially muleteers had been used to handle the dogs but it had proved more effective to let inexperienced soldiers do this as the dogs already knew what was needed most of the time.

Does anyone have more information on this?

[egbert]

Just recently I watched a 1 hr documentation on TV about the Huskie sledge dogs in the Vosges mountains. Two French officers were sent with lots of cash in secrecy to Canada to buy some 200 dogs. One batch though was from the Yukon the other batch from Eskimos in the North/ East.

[egbert]

Here is the link to the trailer

[egbert]

Found the full movie of 1:20hrs here

[centurion]

Thanks for this - unfortunately my broadband is so slow its unplayable

[Dragon]

I have something on animals probably dogs in the Vosges but I can't post it at the moment as I'm using iPad. Forum isn't tablet friendly. Give me till tomorrow, please.

Gwyn

[egbert]

at 10:30 minutes , see actual footage of the huskies in the Vosges mountain warfare.

@centurion: please tag the thread "Vosges battlegrounds"

http://www.ecpad.fr/front-des-vosges-hiver-cantonnement

[andalucia]

a very interesting film. Thank you for posting it Egbert.