Monday, March 31, 2008

How I Got Started In Dogcarting

The town in which I live, Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, was flooded in 1972 during hurricane Agnes. The water reached a height 6 inches from the second-floor. In order to live close to the house while it was being repaired, My wife, Marie, and I decided to purchase a motor home and park it in the driveway. At the time I was the Regional Director of the Governors Justice Commission and had to spend many hours on the road working with municipalities that had been inundated by the flood. This would enable Marie to stay close to the house with our two Giant Schnauzers while the house was being repair .
We were also involved in showing the two Giant Schnauzers in dog shows and spent many weekends going to the shows. We had the Winnebago set up so we could unhook it weekends and drive to the dog show. We had never been to the Florida dog show circuit, and since we now had the motor home and I had lots of vacation time coming, we decided to go.
We planed to spend the month of January on the road and since I knew Giant Schnauzer people in Florida, we were able to make all the arrangements as to where we could park the motor home between dog shows. We planed to visit all the vacation sites near the dog shows.
When the dog shows moved from the west coast to the east coast, we were invited by Cynthia and Vince Fiorino to park in the corral they had for their horses, next to their home in Davie.
While there, Vince showed me a riding cart he had purchased from the Dingus Company. He had used it very little because he didn’t have a harness that fit his Giants properly. I wasn’t too interested in being pulled around by my dogs and didn’t really look to closely at the construction of the cart.
On the way home from Florida, Marie mentioned that she thought it would be fun to have the dogs pull a utility type cart that we could walk along side. We talked about this idea for many a mile and when we got home set about looking to purchase a utility type cart. Needless to say, we were not able to find anyone that manufactured that type dogcart. Now this is where the repair of our flooded house comes into the story. Since all the tools I had were in the flood and I had to replace them, I had all types of woodworking tools available. Marie said I should build a dogcart. I had no idea of how to start and how it should look. I spend many hours in the library researching dogcarts and harnesses. There was much information on the history of carting in Europe and many of the books had pictures of milk carts and teams of dogs pulling the cans of milk to market. I even found and article written by a man in Wisconsin on how to make a harness. Marie tried to contact the author but not with success. Since I worked in the Criminal Justice system, Marie got the idea to contact the police department in the authors home town to enlist their aid in contacting the man. We were sorry to learn that he had passed away a few months earlier. Things were slow in developing and it wasn’t until later in the year when we were having a dinner party one evening that the subject came up about the pending gas crisis. One of the women at the dinner asked Marie if our Giants were related to cart dogs in Europe. She said we could use the dogs to go to the store and have them pull the groceries home. Well that was it for me! Marie said I had to get moving on my dog cart project and get a cart built. I had all the tools and information and there was no reason to delay any longer. Gas lines were long and at times you could not even get gas locally. The shopping center was less than a mile away and she said that it would be good exercise for me and the dogs.
The history of dog carting is not written in glory. Dogs in Europe were used by tradesmen and farmers to pull their wares to market. Things had deteriorated so badly that in 1824, the Prefect of Police in Paris issued an edict forbidding tradesmen to use dogs to pull their trade carts on the streets of Paris.
Dogs had been used to pull heavy loads and in many cases were not fed proper diets to enable them to continue working. Some died in the harness. Carting gradually declined in use in Europe.
Carting in the United States had never developed as a means of transportation for man and dog. Hence if carting were to have a chance as a sport, the carts and the harnesses had to be made so that they fitted properly.
Making the wooden box and the racks was not going to be a problem. But the design of the undercarriage and the wheels and shafts were going to require professional assistance. Fortunately I has a friend, Bob Prashker who manufactured baby car seats and was willing to spend time with me and his designer and make up the plans for those parts of the cart. Bob made the parts in his plant and when the people who worked for him saw the strange parts being built, the were interested in knowing what was going on. When they found out it was for a dog cart, everyone got into the act and came up with ideas for improving on the design. It was amazing how many people helped me with my first dog cart. Bob even had nylon what enabled me to make quality harnesses. Marie was able to sew the harness on her sewing machine. We knew we had to put padding on the chest plate and from research on European harnesses found out that sheepskin was not the thing to use because it generated to much heat and would cause skin irritation. Marie, being a nurse, came up with the idea of using pads that were used for hospital patients. We cut the pads to fit the width of the nylon and sewed it to the harness breast piece.
Bicycle wheels were readily available and without much work were able to be fitted to the axle. The only problem was when weight was placed in the cart the axle that came with the bicycle wheels would bend and the wheels would bind against the cart side. My Father came up with a simple design that provided a bracket that would fit the outside of the wheel and be bolted to the side of the cart thus solving the problem.
The Christian Science Monitor had an article published in 1942 in which the author stated all that was needed was a dog, an old box and a couple of wheels and you were ready to go. Not so! If the sport of dog carting was to succeed, the carts were going to have to be designed to fit the dog and enable the dog to pull the weight with little pressure pressing down on its back. My many helpers were able to solve that problem and when the final design was completed, there was less then three pounds of pressure on the dogs back with a fully loaded cart.
Now the only task before me was to put it all together and hook up my Giant Schnauzer and have her pull the cart!
But that is another story.