Tales of a dog’s life on the ice

A dog is truly man’s best friend, especially when navigating the treacherous terrain of Antarctica.

Those life-saving canine ice explorers are celebrated in a new exhibition at Canterbury Museum, Dogs in Antarctica: Tales from the Pack.

Dogs from Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, watch as the ship is slowly crushed by pack ice.

From Oscar – a member of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) – to small but strong Moll, a young addition to the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1957-1958), the companionable sledge dogs have tales of their own to share.

Oscar had travelled to Antarctica on the Aurora in 1914 as part of the Ross Sea Party, the support crew for Shackleton’s attempted overland crossing of Antarctica via the South Pole.

Oscar helped pull expedition members suffering from scurvy to safety in a snowstorm.

During the Commonwealth expedition in the 1950s, the deputy leader of the New Zealand party, Bob Miller, and his dog team identified and marked out landing sites for aircraft carrying the party's fuel.

Moll, who was born at Aoraki/Mount Cook in 1956, was only one when she joined the party. On the 2500-kilometre journey, Moll wore booties to protect her feet after biting her paw to remove ice.

She later joined the American Antarctic base, Little America V, as the base pet.

Grateful for the nine-dog team’s efforts, Miller brought two members, lead dog Peanuts and Jan, back to New Zealand in 1958.

Oscar and Moll are among the hundreds of dogs who have pulled sledges and provided companionship to explorers on the great Antarctic expeditions.

None of these remarkable ice feats could have been accomplished without their work.

The exhibition features photographs and objects from Canterbury Museum’s Antarctic collections and interviews with Frank Graveson and Peter Cleary, one of the first and one of the last dog handlers at Scott Base.

Dogs in Antarctica: Tales from the Pack is open from 21 September to 10 March 2019.