What is "dogcart"

Dogcart \Dog"cart`\, n. A light one-horse carriage, commonly two-wheeled, patterned after a cart. The original dogcarts used in England by sportsmen had a box at the back for carrying dogs.

n. 1 A cart drawn by a dog. 2 A two wheeled horse-drawn carriage with two transverse seats back to back. The rear seat originally closed up to form a box for carrying dogs.

n. a cart drawn by a dog

A dogcart (or dog-cart) is a light horse-drawn vehicle, originally designed for sporting shooters, with a box behind the driver's seat to contain one or more retriever dogs. The dog box could be converted to a second seat. Later variants included :

• A one-horse carriage, usually two-wheeled and high, with two transverse seats set back to back. It was known as a "bounder" in British slang (not to be confused with the cabriolet of the same name). In India it was called a "tumtum" (possibly an altered form of " tandem").
• A French version having four wheels and seats set back to back was a dos-à-dos (French for "back-to-back").
• An American four-wheeled dogcart, having a compartment for killed game, was called a "game cart".

A young or small groom called a "tiger" might stand on a platform at the rear of a dogcart, to help or serve the driver.

Frequent references to dog-carts are made by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his writings about fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and indeed by many other Victorian writers, as it was a common sight in those days.

Fashions in vehicles changed quickly in the nineteenth century, and there is a great variety of names for different types. The dog-cart bears some resemblance to the phaeton, a sporty, lightly sprung one-horse carriage; the curricle, a smart, light vehicle that fits one driver and passenger, but with two horses; the chaise or shay, in its two-wheeled version for one or two people, with a chair back and a movable hood; and the cabriolet, with two wheels, a single horse, and a folding hood that can cover its two occupants, one of whom is the driver.

Image:Dos-a-Dos Style Carriage.jpg|Dos-à-dos style carriage from Kalibaru, East Java, Indonesia.jpg|Dokar, the horse cart of Indonesia

A dogcart is a cart pulled by one or more dogs. This is now rare, except for entertainment.

Dog carts pulled by two or more dogs were historically used in Belgium and The Netherlands for delivering milk, bread, and other trades. In early Victorian Britain, dogcarts were associated with bakers, and when they used the area reserved for pedestrians, were considered a nuisance. Dog-drawn carts were prohibited in Britain in the early 1900s on animal welfare grounds, but some still exist (mainly for reasons of novelty) in France and Belgium for delivering churns of milk from small farms to the dairy.

Carts pulled by a single dog were sometimes used by peddlers. Dogs were used as draught animals during the First World War to pull small field guns. Dogs were used by Soviet Army in World War II to pull carts containing a stretcher for wounded soldiers.

The modern-day sport of carting is an entertainment involving large dogs pulling carts. Compare dog sled, in which a team of dogs pull over snow or ice.