Archive for May, 2009

Balto was a remarkable sled dog that led a relay from Nenana, to reach vital antitoxin against diphtheria, to the people of Nome. Nome is 539 miles away from Anchorage, Alaska, on the Seward Peninsula by the Bering Sea .

This relay of life saving drugs by sled dogs became imperative because the only plane that could fly the medicines was incapacitated with its frozen engine.

The journey was an extreme obstacle race, in the winter of 1925, across stretches of dangerous landscape and incessant blizzards. 

But the dog and his trainer (a Norwegian named Gunnar Kaasen) moved forward steadfastedly (in a temperature reaching a cruel -23 degrees F), in the company of several other mushers and sled dogs and completed the mission successfully.  That was one endeavor in which the dogs served their masters with unflinching loyalty.

On the main path leading North from the Tisch Children’s Zoo, New York is the statue of this special dog. 

The plaque below reads “Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through Arctic blizzards, from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the Winter of 1925.   Endurance - Fidelity - Intelligence “.

Hachiko, an Akita, belonged to Hidesamuro Ueno. a professor in  Tokyo. Every day,  Hachiko would stand by the door and watch his master leave for work.. In the evening at 4 pm he would trot to the Shibuya Station to welcome his master back home. 

One day, in 1925, Hidesamuro Ueno succumbed to a fatal stroke at his work place.  Hachiko waited for his master at 4  that day and every day after that for the next 10 years!  He was a familiar and endearing figure at the station waiting in vain for his beloved master!  Though he was fed and cared for by the people who knew him in the station, his loyalty to his master was absolute as he waited day after day until 1935, when he breathed his last.  In memory of this exceptionally loyal dog stands a statue at the Shibuya Station!

I am sure most of you are familiar with both these stories.  Iam never bored reading about these wonderful dogs again and again… and every time I wonder what is it that makes a dog, as compared to other animals, so loyal?

Dogs, even before they were domesticated, were in the habit of living and moving in packs.  They hunt, eat and sleep in groups.  Being alone has never been in the nature of a dog.  They also recognize and accept a group leader, the alpha dog, and obey and follow him.

Also, with centuries of breeding and domestication, his hunting and wandering instincts have been brought down to an optimal level that it can serve man wel, without being a threat. 

When you first adopt a little dog, your family and friends play with him, pet him and love to care for him.  He recognises a group because of the pack mentality instilled in him.  He would apparently want to be a part of this group.  He will depend upon the group, he will love them and he will stay with them, following the accepted leader - you. 

That is why obeying loving and being loyal comes naturally to a dog!