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• Which breeds of dog are capable of carting?
• Is dog carting a new sport?
• How fast can carting dogs go?
• The history of the single shaft design
• The pace of change: how Mini Sulkies exceeded the expectations of the inventor himself

Dogs originally bred as working dogs, or are generally strong and athletic, are all capable of carting with an adult driver. Some examples include:

Siberian Huskies Alaskan Malamutes Samoyeds American Pit Bulls

Bernese Mountain Dogs Great Danes Rottweilers Mastiffs

Bouviers Des Flandres Newfoundlands Saint Bernards Irish Wolf Hounds

Giant Schnauzers Akitas Belgian Malinois Leonbergers

Any fit dog over 25kg (55lb) is suitable for carting. Many smaller breeds are also able to cart in teams of two and three.

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The use of dogs as draft animals has a long history. Newfoundlands hauled fishing nets in to shore for their owners, Swiss Mountain Dogs and Rottweilers hauled carts containing farm produce to market for their owners, and numerous large breeds have been used over the centuries to haul firewood home. It surprises many people to learn how many varieties of working dogs were bred specifically for draft work. The Casa De Osa Newfoundland page catalogues the many jobs Newfs carried out for their owners from the nineteenth century onwards.

The April 2006 issue of The Canine Journal includes the article 'Dogs at War', which records the valiant efforts of draught dogs during the first world war:

The Russians trained and used dogs in warfare. White Samoyeds were used to pull white clad marksmen on sleds close to enemy lines. In one sector of the front, a team of sled dogs carried over a thousand wounded men from the battlefield and hauled several hundred tons of ammunition during a five week period. Pulling guns, men and supplies, it is estimated that dogs saved "thousands upon thousands" of lives on the Russian front.
The Belgian army used twelve companies of dog drawn machine guns during the war and hundreds of dogs were drafted to draw gun and ammunition wagons. (pp. 22–23)

If you're curious to know more about the the history of dogs as draft animals, we recommend Vixen's Mistress' comprehensive website, The History of Dog Carts. It demonstrates that dog carting dates back to at least the Middle Ages. Her in-depth research has unearthed dozens of photographs and articles about dog carting in previous centuries, and the many scanned illustrations make her website very entertaining and informative.

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Factors which affect the speed at which a dog can pull a vehicle include:

• the weight and fitness of the dog,
• the weight and balance of the vehicle,
• the weight of the driver,
• the size of the wheels, and
• the terrain.

Given this many variables it is difficult to generalise about speeds carting dogs achieve, but in our customers' experience large breeds will trot at 8 to 10 mph over level ground. Some breeds prefer to pace rather than trot (that is, swinging left legs then right legs, rather than picking up the front left/back right legs and then the front right/back left legs) and can maintain their speed over considerable distances (more than a mile). The fastest reported speed by a Mini owner so far is that of Cindy Scarpa driving her Great Dane, Gus: they reached 38mph!

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The Mini Sulky single shaft design has a history dating back over 2,500 years to ancient Greece.

It was the ancient Greeks who introduced the girth strap, neutral balance, and coined the term "dorsal hitch" to describe the contact point between the tip of the shaft and the horse's harness. Use of the design continued throughout the Roman Empire, but was largely lost during the Dark Ages (around 500 AD). The sole surviving dorsal hitch vehicle prior to the twentieth century was the 'curricle', a two-wheeled vehicle to which a pair of horses was harnessed. The design originated in Italy, was considerably altered by the English, and was considered a 'gentleman's conveyance' used for short and long journeys. The Encyclopaedia of Driving by Sallie Walrond notes, 'When properly balanced it [the dorsal hitch design] is said to be easy on the horses.'

The dorsal hitch design was revived successfully in the U.S.A. in the 1970s by NASA project engineer Joe King, on his single shaft racing sulky. Commenting on Joe King's sulky, Eddie Simms wrote, 'One leading trainer at Liberty Bell Park told me that, "Horses race keener on a sulky attached to the harness saddle crown," but was at a loss to explain why this should be so.'

Most recently, it has been used with great success on another Regal original design, the Hittite Special pairs sulky, a vehicle which holds more world records over the mile than any pairs sulky in history. In the last two years, in both North America and Australia, new versions of the Dorsal Hitch harness have become popular in light harness racing.

Another advantage of the single shaft is that the flexibility inherent in its serpentine shape provides a cushioning effect between the hitching point and the driver, since the shaft will lengthen slightly (i.e. tend to straighten out) under acceleration and tend to shorten under deceleration.

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"Years ago I worked with Dr Chris Johnson of the university of Uppsala, Sweden to create a mathematical model of the oxygen consumption of horses as they race. When I developed the Mini Sulkies, I used a less complex version of that same model to predict the speed of dogs pulling a Mini, allowing for variations in driver weight, sulky weight, wheel diameter and dog weight. The model predicted speeds in excess of 60 kilometers per hour - and I thought at the time that this was ridiculous. No dog has ever pulled an adult at anything like that speed! So I put a 'block' in the program so that it would not go over a predicted speed of 48 kph (30 mph).

"I should have known better. The maths are seldom wrong (especially, as in this case, when they had already been tested against real horses), and within a couple of years of Minis being introduced to the United States, one partially disabled owner was doing better than 60 kph off-road! Had I not had a recording speedometer on my own sulky, I would not have believed that my Giant Schnauzer Tom could have pulled me (I weigh 96 kg or 211 pounds) at the same speed (64.8 kph) as a racing greyhound pulling nothing at all.

"My profession is designing and building race sulkies, and I have been very successful doing that. Vehicles I have designed since 1980 have broken ten times more world records over the mile than the entire output of all my southern hemisphere opposition. But the most exciting field I have ever been in is dog sulkies, and the reason is, when I design a Mini Sulky, I do not have to battle the mass of regulations that apply to harness racing sulkies. As a result, Mini Sulkies are now vastly more technically advanced than anything in harness racing. With one tenth the draft animal weight pulling the same load, we are going faster than any horse has ever gone pulling any sort of vehicle at all!

"An analogy is 18-foot race yachts. They became the fastest mono-hulls in the world because the design rules were, "The boat may not be longer than 18 feet, and the race starts at 2 o'clock." In the same way, because there are no limitations on canine sulky design, I can push the envelope as hard as I can to produce fast, light, unique vehicles which exceed expectations every time - including my own!

"They might not realise it, but I believe Mini owners around the world are part of the most exciting light harness vehicle era the world has ever seen."

- James Walsh

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