A Greenlander and her dogs

We asked our friend Mia Lindenhann, a resident of Ilulissat to contribute to this blog. In our exhibition we present some aspects of traditional and contemporary life with dogs in Greenland. Like many northern Greenlanders, Mia keeps a group of dogs and goes dog sledding with them in the winter. Here, Mia introduces her own dogs and shows some photos.

The Greenland Dog is a hard core dog. I read that they made the best Greenland dog by keeping a female dog in a wolf area and waiting for her to get pregnant. The first puppies are too wild. The puppies' puppies are the very best sleddogs.

The Greenland dog has much of its natural instincts left, which is good but can also be unfortunate. The dog can be very, very harmless and a good pet. Like my Milo, who wouldn't hurt a fly, just wants to be petted and behave to please its owner.

Lillepigen and Mia

Milo

Lillepigen was originally called Zenta, then the name changed to Lillepigen which means the little girl in Danish. When she is bad she is still sometimes called Zenta. She loves to smell my and others' breath, never licks, and then press her head under my arms, and just standing still, she smells my breath again and goes under the other arm. Not like her boyfriend, Milo, who wants to be petted way too much. If it was up to him he would be petted non-stop all day long. He will go far for petting and attention. And I have to ignore him and say 'no, bad boy' and it's sometimes hard when he looks like that, and presses himself up against me like on the photo. He's a sleddog, a teamdog, and has to respect my space when I'm doing something else, where it's necessary not to have him lying there on top of what I'm fixing and I have to put him in place. 

Lillipigen lost her puppy

Lillepigen lost her puppy at birth, it wasn't breathing. I don't know why, and how, she usually waits to give birth until I am there, and maybe she waited too long. She had some difficulty before, where I had to help getting the puppie out, which is rare for the Greenland dog. She is a very small dog, and looks a little different, maybe she has some foreign genes in her. The Greenland dog is very much protected from other breeds for good reasons. South west Greenlanders are not allowed to bring in their dogs to the north, and northern dogs should not get some different genes and come back to Greenland dog area in the north of Greenland. The puppy wasn't breathing. I tried mouth to mouth and stimulate it by rubbing him and warm him up, but I couldn't safe him. I have had bad experiences before taking the dead puppy away from its mom, when no puppy survives, so I let her keep the puppy for almost 2 days. She wouldn't let me take it either. But after the waiting she understood why I took the puppy. And I gave her some treats and biting toys, and she was almost okay.

Pedro, the black one. Louie, the white one with black head.

After the summer Milo suddenly had a competitor, Pedro. Pedro has become an adult and is much bigger than Milo, and Milo knows this. But he won't give up his position as top dog. And the other dog will not accept Pedro as top dog. And in nature Pedro would leave the pack and start his own pack or be killed. I hope to try different things to keep him, but I still don't know. The dogs were so eager to go dogsledding, that I took the chance and went with Milo and Pedro and first one other and then two, and I had no trouble. But I'm still worried that one of them should jump on him and fight.  

The second dogsledding of the season. From left: Hannibal the big puppy, Milo, Pedro and Louie. Not much snow. The climate change/global warming is a big problem. Some towns and villages are on islands and have no more sea ice and can't really go dogsledding.