Denali Sled Dogs

The history of sled dogs in Denali National Park reaches back over 100 years to 1922. While 100 years is a long time, in Alaska, sled dogs have been part of the landscape for many more hundreds of years. Native Alaskan families all had a few sled dogs that served as transportation for trapping, trading, and traveling to neighboring villages. 

So, one of the fun activities you can do at Denali National Park is go to visit the dog kennels and learn about how the park staff train and utilize the sled dogs for all kinds of work at the park. 

The Denali sled dogs' bloodline can be traced back to free-ranging, semi-wild village dogs that precede modern standardized breeds. Overtime, humans crossbred working breeds (i.e., Siberian huskies, Alaskan malamutes. Samoyed, German Shepards, etc.) into the village dog bloodline to create the ultimate hard working, hard pulling breed. The lack of uniformity is due to selective breeding for performance versus a standardized appearance. That's why the dogs all look different. 

We got to learn all about the dogs, see the current puppies (who are in training for the first two years of their lives), see a demonstration as well as hear about all the jobs the sled dogs do in the winter. 

Here are a couple of this year's puppies - the primary training the first year is socialization, some exploring the landscape, and getting used to the trainers handling their paws. The whole experience of learning about the sled dogs was really interesting.