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Dog Sledding with a Passenger


Dog sledding with a passenger or two can be a fun experience as long as it is done safely and you take the proper precautions. If you intend on transporting passengers in your dog sled you need to make sure that you have a sled big enough and sturdy enough to hold the extra weight. Most wooden basket sleds can hold a hundred pounds or so but if you through a 180lbs. adult on top of that you will be seriously over capacity. It may be tempting to leave extra baggage behind and just take a passenger with you but most of the items you carry with you on a daily basis are there for a reason. If you start leaving extra parts and supplies behind so that you can accommodate the extra weight of a passenger you could be asking for trouble.
If you are going to start transporting passengers you also need to make sure that your dogs are up to the challenging of pulling even more weight. Before you start allowing passengers to ride along it would be a good idea to condition your sled team for a few weeks so that they can get used to pulling the added weight. If you buy a bigger and heavier sled to accommodate one or more passengers and add in all of the extra emergency supplies you have to bring along for those passengers you may decide that you need to add two extra dogs to your team to do the job effectively. Asking your team to go from pulling 300lbs. to 500-600lbs. can be a bit much, especially if you have a small dog team to begin with. When transporting passengers you should also make sure that they know all of the safety rules they need to follow as well as what they should do in certain situations.
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