[Sca-cooks] Dogs in SCA households

[Mike C. Baker]

> Amra replied to Phlip with:
> >> Hmmm... Souage is a Husky, bred for pulling, and 45 lbs, so she
could 
> >> pull about 135 lbs. Wonder what I could train her to pull...
> >
> > At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, sled / sledge /
travois 
> > come immediately to mind...
> >
> > In the plains, I'd certainly like to toy around with travois.   
> > Certain I could still lash one up (did so in Scouts multiple
times...)
> Using a travois, compared to a wheeled wagon or cart, would 
> drastically cut down on the amount of weight that could be 
> pulled. A dog, depending upon it's size and body structure, 
> can pull about three times it's body weight for a reasonable 
> amount of time, but can carry, say in saddle bags, only about 
> 1/3 of its weight. But my understanding is that is pulling a 
> wheeled cart, not dragging a travois. The advantage of the 
> travois though, is that they are much easier to construct.
> 
> Now, a sled would work well on snow, but I don't know that 
> there are many SCA events held outside in the snow. 

Part of why I mentioned sledge, Stefan, and travois...

A "blanket" drag -- earlier form of the travois, by some lines of
reasoning -- or the travois can actually support more weight or give
less resistance or provide better control than a wheeled conveyance on
some surfaces: some consistencies of snow, most reasonably full-coverage
ice, loose sand, some mud, and perhaps even high-grass prairie.  Wheels
are certainly more versatile and generally more flexible.  (If ya need
sled runners for ice, lock the wheels tight. For snow, lash them to a
set of handy planks.  Deep water? Slip a few cross-logs between spokes
or in prepared notches and float the water-tight box / log bed. And so
forth.)

For a small breed, a travois with proper harness allows more payload
than a pack by itself, and -- in most cases -- wheels will indeed
provide more possible payload.  Adding simple wheels to the ends of the
travois poles can make for a best-of-several-worlds rig: without poles,
the harness serves as a light pack; with poles, the load shifts to the
rear and is drug instead of carried; add the wheels (and some judicious
re-packing) and that effective load is a significant multiple for very
little sacrifice weight -- and with little loss of control for the
animal.

As far as I can tell from everything I've seen / worked with, the real
trick is finding a decent balance between rigidity of the framework for
the wheels and the flexibility / padding / strapping for the pack beast
to still obtain stability.  (Hey, I'v seen an eight-up hitch of sheep
"working" -- woulda been 12-up, but they were having some difficulty
with the third team that night...)  

The most common stability issue seems to involve cornering:  there is a
pronounced tendency for the common small-diameter trailing wheels to
"tip up" when a corner is turned, and most dogs have a tendency to turn
more tightly than the stable radius of the typical three-point rig even
with training.  Something closer to a sulky-style rig tends to reduce
the stability issue, but must be carefully loaded so that enough weight
remains forward of the rotation point -- don't want the poor beast to be
suspended mid-air, after all!

Hope these thunks help some...

Adieu, Amra / ttfn - Mike / Pax ... Kihe (Mike C. Baker)
SCA: al-Sayyid Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri al-Amra, F.O.B, OSCA
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