A Thousand Dogs for the Klondike

J. B. Powles, a well-known citizen of Seattle, is now engaged with ex-Mayor Black and two other gentlemen in the importation of dogs in carload lots from the East, to be furnished, properly trained, to Klondike-bound parties as affording the cheapest and most suitable means of transporting their effects to Alaska's interior. Already one car has arrived from Chicago and another is on the way. It is the intention to winter in Seattle about 1,000 dogs, and for the purpose of sheltering them the sheds of an abandoned brickyard have been secured, capable of affording comfortable quarters for the number that will be on hand. Upon the invitation of the promoter, a representative visited the mammoth kennels of the Seattle-Alaska Dog Company and had an opportunity to look upon the largest and motliest collection of canines of all breeds and colors that ever met his gaze. Several men are employed to do nothing but feed and train them, and they are kept pretty busy, too. They are fed a cooked composition of coarse ground grains, cheap butchers' scraps, horsemeat, etc. They eat ravenously at present, for when they were en route the attention given them was insufficient to keep them in good flesh, and at first most of them were so weak they were compelled to lean against the fence to howl respectably. The generous rations they are receiving, however, is rounding them out, and some are assuming quite an aristocratic appearance. Throughout the coming spring it is expected that this company will do a land-office business in selling these dogs, picked up from the slums of the cities in the East and converted into trained animals of high degree, whose value will be appreciated by many an argonaut when they have faithfully pulled him to his fortune, or perchance saved his life when other supplies ran short. This venture, while unique, has much merit, and as a business proposition will no doubt prove profitable to those who have engaged in it.