[2][3] He was named Cugu [tso`go], which means puppy in Northern Sami language, and later after the Japanese Admiral, Tōgō Heihachirō.

He only grew to about 48 pounds (22 kg) in adulthood and had a black, brown, and gray coat that made him appear perpetually dirty.

[6] After only a few weeks as a house pet, Togo jumped through the glass of a closed window and ran several miles back to his original master's kennel.

This would eventually prove a valuable early experience, as it was difficult to teach a lead dog to keep a wide berth of oncoming teams.

Seppala had been hired by a client to transport him quickly to a newly discovered gold claim which would be an overnight round trip for the team.

Unable to spare extra time dealing with the young Togo's antics, Seppala tethered him inside the kennel with instructions left to not let him free until he and the team were well and gone.

A short while after Seppala had left, Togo broke free of the tether and jumped the kennel fence, getting his paw caught in the process.

"[8] Togo began training, and after a few years filled the lead dog position nearly fulltime, often running in single-lead, without a partner.

[3] His prowess as a leader consisted of many impressive feats of intelligence and endurance, documented by writers and historians through accounts by Seppala himself.

When arriving at the shore of the Bering Sea, the ice floe the team was on top of was too far from land for them to cross or Seppala to jump over.

Without guidance or prompting, Togo leapt into the water, took the broken line in his mouth, spun around to wrap it around his shoulders twice fashioning a makeshift harness, and pulled the ice floe to shore, his team with it.

The team appeared multiple times at Madison Square Garden, which was being managed by Tom Rickard, formerly of Nome, and where on December 30, Togo was awarded a gold medal by Roald Amundsen.

[11] In New England, they competed in several dog sled races against local Chinooks of Arthur Walden and won by huge margins.

Today the mounted skin is on display in a glass case at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Headquarters museum in Wasilla, Alaska.

[16] In 2001, he finally got an individual statue, but of a minor size initially at New York City's Lower East Side and later moved to Seward Park.

[10][16][17] The popular fictional teen sleuth Nancy Drew named a stray terrier after him in the 1937 novel The Whispering Statue.

His journey, fraught with white-out storms, was the longest by 200 miles and included a traverse across perilous Norton Sound — where he saved his team and driver in a courageous swim through ice floes.