This came up without context on my instagram and I have so many questions and zero answers but I thought you would appreciate… whatever the hell is happening here…
Lots of big bois were used for carting in the Victorian era - early 20th century even if their breed/type’s original purpose was not for utility carting, but something else.
Around this time we not only see an explosion of the dog fancy, but the middle classes having more time for pleasure and hobbies. This is likely part of that, although I have not see a team of Danes as illustrated here before. A lot of this time for more hobby and pleasure would end by the depression of the 1930s.
The set up is somewhat similar to horse collar style sled dog harnesses that were around at this time and beyond as well. For some time, especially during the gold rush when we have less application of indigenous sledding equipment we see set ups like this with the dogs single file and not much of a harness to speak of, more a collar and straps. Lots of dog carting & sledding at the time for Europeans was based exclusively on the way they applied carting commands, equipment and uses for horses. We even tend to still use horse carting commands for sledding/joring/carting in the English speaking world today (Gee/Haw).
