LUNA PIER, Mich.

“Come on Frosty, come on. You can do it,” Toni Yoakam said while encouraging her Siberian husky to pull weight.

Frosty was competing for the first time in a weight-pull challenge. Yoakam recently received the 2-year-old dog that was born in Canada. She organized the Double Dog Dare weight-pulling contest, which took place recently at the Luna Pier Plaza.

Dogs and their owners braved cold temperatures in the weight-pulling challenge co-sponsored by Yoakam’s group, World Wide Weight Pull Organization and Iron Dog Weight Pull.

Dogs and their owners traveled from around the country, including New York and Maryland, to compete in the contest.

“I just love doing it,” Yoakam told The Monroe Evening News.

She had five of her six dogs participate in the contest. Dogs wear specialized harnesses and are hooked to a cart. During the contest, the animals have 60 seconds to pull the weight carts, which are either on wheels or on a rail system. During the winter, contests take place on snow as well.

Dogs can earn titles based on how much weight is pulled in proportion to their body weight from the smallest to the largest breed.

Lauri Rafalski from Westland encouraged her 13-pound dog, a rat terrier named Bella, to pull an empty cart, which weighs 370 pounds without additional weight added.

“She’s a working breed, so she loves this,” Rafalski said.

Bella pulled on her first few tries in the contest, but when she was hooked up to the bigger cart, the animal decided she was finished for a while and stood still.

Yoakam said weight is added onto the cart in increments based on the size of the dog. The weights are cinder blocks that weigh 34 pounds each.

Participants said the weight-pulling does not harm the dogs. Yoakam said she has been participating in weightpulling contests since 1989.

“I’ve never seen a dog get hurt,” she said.

English mastiff owner Laura Lautner agrees.

“The dogs don’t pull if they don’t want to,” she said. “If they don’t want to pull they just kind of stand there.”

Her 206-pound dog, Noble, has participated in competitions in the United States and Canada. Noble began as a show dog winning trophies for confirmation before Lautner, who lives outside of Buffalo, N.Y., decided to try weight pulling after a friend’s suggestion.

“He just loves it,” she said. “He’s got this instinct. He’s unbelievable to watch.”

Noble was trying to set a record pulling 17,000 pounds on the rail system. In this contest, he pulled more than 13,100 pounds.

Though he has been pulling competitively for only a year, Noble has won several titles through the International Weight Pulling Association and hopes to set another record at the organization’s national contest in Alberta.

The animal won the Supreme Grand Champion weight title for pulling 23 times his body weight seven times, which was about 4,738 pounds.

Lautner and her partner, John Gordon, have worked with Noble to build his stamina so the animal could pull more weight.

“John walks him around with about 100 pounds, which isn’t much weight, but it helps with his endurance,” she said. “John has really taken him to the next level.”

Noble is one of five mastiffs and a Labrador retriever owned by Lautner and Gordon. He is also a certified therapy dog who visits nursing homes and schools.

Because he spends time pulling on the weekend, Noble doesn’t train during the week. If the load is too heavy, he stops pulling.

“He enjoys doing it,” Lautner explained. “When we get out the harness, he just gets excited.”