What was Buck Thinking?

Jack London’s World of Dog Training

So, Jack London was an incredible author!  But did he really know all that much about training dogs, dog thought patterns, and the motives that truly drive a dog, or team of dogs, to behave in a certain way?

No.

Well, that’s my opinion anyway.  

First he only spent one (maybe two) winters in the Gold Fields.  And it’s been my experience, and the experience of every musher I have ever spoken with, that it takes years and years to understand the social structure of a dog team.

Second, London takes early scientific ideas about wild wolf pack structures and projects them onto dogs, that idea has been resoundingly dismissed by animal behaviorists over the past 10, 20, 30 years.

So, no, I think it is very clear he had no real idea about what was occurring internally to the dogs that worked the Gold Fields.  The Klondike Gold Rush marked a high point for dogs being used as freight animals.  It was a period of incredible genetic influx into the sled dog breeds.  But it was also a time of intense cruelty and misunderstanding.

To learn more about how sled dogs think and modern ideas on how to train them I suggest you check out the discussion thread on the Sleddog Central website  

But if we can assume Jack London didn’t have enough knowledge to accurately create a story… Then what species did he have enough background to weave a story around?

Could Bucks transformation really be about London’s own desires and hopes?  He was after all from the “sun kissed valley’s” of California?

If it was more about a human transformation… Can you relate to it?  Have you ever experienced similar events that changed who you were as a person?