Most dogs during the summer in B. C.’s Northland are outfitted with back packs for travel, tying in front and underneath the belly. Some dogs can carry as much as 50 pounds. In common with the other police dogs, we were fitted with side packs, but we never had a load much greater than 25 pounds. Even Nipper had his small pack and carried the boss’s lunch—l0 pounds if he were hungry.

In many ways summer travel with its long exciting days is more interesting than straining along narrow snow-bound winter trails. We usually walked along by ourselves, taking our own time, but when the big grizzlies were around we bunched close together right behind the master. The dangerous silvertips stayed way up high on the mountains most of the summer so we didn’t often see or smell them ; they lived on berries, marmots and various roots found above timber line.

In camp men love sitting about the fire telling stories. The boss often travelled with Indians and we would hear them spinning yarns long after the evening meal—you couldn’t say “into the night” because it never really got dark during summer. We loved walking through the Northwoods during the lovely Arctic night, it was fresh and cool, mosquitoes never were quite as bad then and it some- how seemed to be much easier travelling. Moose and caribou fed during the cool of the twilight and we often saw them browsing in swamps and lakes, or on the thick moss of the hillsides.

We sometimes travelled to nearby lakes, both winter and summer, to haul in fish. Always a pleasant outing, it gave us a much appreciated bit of exercise.

One day in the early Fall, Rum, Rye, Brownie, Tony and myself set out with two men to hunt mountain goat. We had never been into that part of the country before and everything about it was strange. There were no bridges over the rivers so we poled across on rafts. I had the misfortune to fall in at the first hig river we came to and had to swim for it in the icy waters. It gave me such a fright I was afraid of water—especially swift flowing streams—ever after.

We climbed mountain passes, walked through pleasant meadowland and_ slid

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down steep valleys. On the morning of the third day we woke up in a white, cold world. The high peaks of the nearby mountains were shrouded in clouds and everywhere was the white, whirling snow of the first fall of the year. We happened to be camped at the bottom of a deep valley, and already the floor of the hollow was buried in four or five inches of snow. Heeding the ominous warning we turned back immediately and headed for home. We had a grim time crossing over the

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high ridges, even when the men broke trail the snow came over our bellies, but they helped us over the real rough spots. We were very tired that night as we camped by a little stream just at timber- line. It was cold at that altitude but we were comfortable on our beds of spruce boughs.

We ran short of food that trip as the men had expected to shoot some game; but we had ptarmigan for supper at our next camp, and the following day reached the detachment, tired and famished.

Late in October we were presented with four young brothers, so we felt grown up then. They were lots of fun and loved to play with us—particularly Nipper.

Winter activity began by hauling fire- wood from a heavily timbered spot about

a mile upstream. Five of us could haul a pretty heavy load with good going— from 500 to 700 pounds was average. For hauling logs we used a wider and stronger sleigh than usual—the width of a standard Yukon sleigh is 16 inches. Brownie was leader while I was in the equally im- portant position as shaft dog. From my station the sleigh can be guided by leaning one way or another into the shafts—birch poles attached rigidly to the front of the sleigh but allowing an up and down motion. Hauling wood was a chore but put us in shape for the long police patrols of the late winter.

Our first emergency job was to bring down a sick prospector named Dan Kean from way up McDames Creek. We were the first sleigh over the trail that winter which meant the constable breaking trail every bit of the way. By this time we were becoming an efficient team, obeying Gee and Haw, Whoa and Mush with

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