It was snack time at the Denali National Park and Preserve sled dog puppy enclosure, and a white pup with grey splotches on his head was trying to chomp on a reporter’s mic.
The fluffy little meatball was only a few months old, but much bigger than his littermates. Rangers named him Mammoth — not just for his size or appetite, but because he and his littermates are all named after national parks. The other three are Acadia, Sequoia and Rainier.
David Tomeo, the park’s kennel manager, said those parks each sent junior ranger badges for the pups. That’s in addition to a stack of fanmail and care packages the kennel gets from people all over the world.
“We're kind of overflowing with dog toys,” he said.
The park has been running sled dogs and raising puppies for over a century. Rangers say the livestreamed Puppy Cam, which the park started about a decade ago, has become a huge draw for park tourists.
Valerie Cox and her family came all the way out from Memphis, Tennessee, specifically for the pups. She works from home and likes to set alarms to catch the puppies at meal times.
“I keep it up on my second monitor at work, and so I'll watch it throughout the day,” she said. “They just captured our little hearts.”
But behind the Puppy Cam’s cuteness is a working sled dog program with an important role in the park. Tomeo said it supports wilderness preservation by providing a low-impact way to work in remote areas, but that the dogs are more than a means of travel. They’re a living link to a part of Alaska’s cultural heritage that’s in decline.
“Dog sledding used to be the norm,” Tomeo said. “It used to be that every village had multiple dog teams. With the advent of snow machines, just there's less dog teams. And dog teams are expensive — even just the ability to feed dogs has gotten very difficult for a lot of people.”
He said the park’s furry little internet sensations are helping rangers preserve the tradition by teaching its significance to both online and in-person visitors.
He said people all over the world watch the Puppy Cam 24/7. Not just having it on in the background — but paying close attention to what’s happening in the kennel. He said it’s like having thousands of dogsitters all at once.
“We will sometimes get people calling the park about the water dishes being empty — not realizing that we have multiple water dishes in there,” Tomeo said. “Or, ‘So-and-so just vomited,’ which is kinda normal. Or, ‘We think that Mammoth is eating more than his share of food,’ and things like that.”
On at least one occasion, netizens’ concerns were real. It happened late on a summer night last year, with the previous litter.
“They said, ‘There's a loose dog outside the puppy pen that's right there in the fence,’” Tomeo said. “I got the call at home, and we got a staff member over here quick. One of our other adult dogs that got loose was there, just wanting to be by the pups.”
This month, the 2026 litter will join the big dogs in interpretive events for visitors, like running around the kennel in step with their caretakers. Tomeo said exposing the puppies to the adoring public will help prepare them for life on a dog team.
“Being around all that noise and distraction is actually good training for the pups to stay focused,” he said. “If all their siblings are running in one direction, we want them to run in that direction too.”
As a tour bus loaded with visitors pulled away from the kennel, rangers demonstrated what they’ve been working on. After taking a moment to hype up the tiny sled dogs, they threw open the gate to the enclosure, rangers and puppies sprinting together in a blur of fur and khaki.