m Fullerton to
Winnipeg found that combination very desirable. With us, however, it
did not succeed. The pups were lank and weedy and not nearly so
capable as the ordinary Straits breed.

The real Labrador dog is a very slightly modified wolf. A good
specimen stands two feet six inches, or even two feet eight inches
high at the shoulder, measures over six feet six inches from the tip
of the nose to the tip of the tail, and will scale a hundred pounds.
The hair is thick and straight; the ears are pointed and stand
directly up. The large, bushy tail curves completely over on to the
back, and is always carried erect. The colour is generally tawny, like
that of a gray wolf, with no distinctive markings. The general
resemblance to wolves is so great that at Davis Inlet, where wolves
come out frequently in winter, the factor has seen his team mixed with
a pack of wolves on the beach in front of the door, and yet could not
shoot, being unable to distinguish one from the other. The Eskimo dog
never barks, but howls exactly like a wolf, in sitting posture with
the head upturned. The Labrador wolf has never been known to kill a
man, but during the years I have spent in that country I have known
the dogs to kill two children and one man, and to eat the body of
another. Our dogs have little or no fear, and unlike the wolves, will
unhesitatingly attack even the largest polar bear.

No amount of dry cold seems to affect the dogs. At 50 deg. F. below zero,
a dog will lie out on the ice and sleep without danger of frost-bite.
He may climb out of the sea with ice forming all over his fur, but he
seems not to mind one iota. I have seen his breath freeze so over his
face that he had to rub the coating off his eyes with his paws to
enable him to see the track.

The dogs have a wonderful instinct for finding their way under almost
insurmountable difficulties, and they have oftentimes been the means
of saving the lives of their masters. Once I was driving a distance of
seventy miles across country. The path was untravelled for the winter,
and was only a direction, not being cut or blazed. The leading dog had
been once across the previous year with the doctor. The "going" had
then been very bad; with snow and fog the journey had taken three
days. A large part of the way lay across wide frozen lakes, and
then through woods. As I had never been that way before I had to leave
it to the dog. Without a single fault, as far as we knew, he took u