I made journeys with my dogs throughout April. There were the usual storms.

Lead dogs are the brains and without them my dogs go nowhere. It's the gifted lead dogs that make that invisible thread connection. It’s makes for exhilarating work. Loads is my number one lead dog. I always want to have other dogs who can run from the front and take commands. I tried Girly and she took to the role. Girly and Loads are siblings. I tried Bigness up front too and he took to it. Only five months in harness and he’s already showing leader potential. Bigness is one of Girly’s pups.

The bulk of my dogs’ fighting injuries were inflicted before Christmas. Frank and Panzer were out of action for four months and up until April there seemed to be an armistice. It wasn’t to last.

On one April journey I was three days travel from home and I had Plet inside a hunting cabin suffering from fight wounds. What instigated the fight? Girly was in season.

At the scene of the crime I administered antibiotics to Plet immediately. His eyes were rolling. I thought he was going to die.

In the warm cabin I covered poor Plet with my sleeping bag and syringed water into his mouth every hour for two days. He threw some of it up. Days later he didn’t so I sugared a solution and kept up the syringe work. I wanted to bring those responsible inside to show them what they’d done. I helped him up and walked him around the cabin. He didn’t eat for 5 days.

I was so tired before we made a move for home. Plet rode on my sled, snug in a bag. I had him inside my house for three weeks, feeding him three times a day. I knew it was time for him to go out when jumped on to a table breaking and scattering what lay on it when he heard a dog team go by.  

Our nearest vet practice is over a thousand miles away on Greenland’s west coast, and because it’s cheaper to fly to Australia than it is to fly from one side of Greenland to the other, vet visits here are as rare as rocking horse poo.

I’ve lived in Greenland since 2007 and have only seen a vet here once. And she was on holiday.

With a sick dog requiring treatment beyond my veterinary skills, I email and describe symptoms accompanied with digital pictures to a vet for a diagnosis. If medication is to be administered the vet sends it to the Ittoqqortoormiit hospital for me to pick-up. It doesn’t help when mail is delayed by storms, sometimes for weeks at a time. If you have to put a dog down you’re on our own.

On Tuesday 28th I shot Rocker. To do it hurt me inside so much. He was a lovely big dog but was getting old. I had to take him out of harness on his last trip and let him follow. He did for a while before I lost sight of him. It made me sick with worry. Every camp I left behind loads of dog food. He turned up wagging his tail. He hadn't lost any weight so he must have been eating all I'd left and followed my trail home.  He would never have been able to run the way he once did alongside his buddies and this would have left him very unhappy. I didn’t want him to feel that. I’d thought it all through and even tried to bring him in for a life inside but he hated it.

Before I shot him he looked at me in the loving way I'll always remember him by.

I felt wretched.

So what’s to be done?