Greenland Dog

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The Greenland Dog (Greenlandic: Kalaallit Qimmiat, Danish: Grønlandshund) is a breed of large dog of husky type. It is kept as a sled dog. It descends from dogs brought from Siberia to North America by the Thule people 1000 years ago, as does the Canadian Eskimo Dog – to which is sometimes considered to be identical, despite their geographic isolation. The Greenland Dog is considered nationally and culturally important to Greenland and efforts are made to safeguard its purity. In western Greenland north of the Arctic Circle and the entirety of eastern Greenland, it is illegal to import any dog from outside (except for police and assistance dogs with a special permit), and since 2017 all dogs have to be microchipped and registered in the Greenland dog database. In the southwest, such restrictions are not in place and the purity of dogs is not monitored. As the population has been falling (c. 15,000 in Greenland as of 2016, and 12,000 as of 2021), a number of projects have been initiated in an attempt of ensuring that Greenland's dog sledding culture, knowledge and use, along with the breed itself, are not lost.

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