DCHP-1 Online

foregoer

• 1 n. in a dog team, the dog, sometimes a female, who leads the team, setting the pace and carrying out the driver's commands. See pictures at fan hitch and tandem hitch.

  See also: leader (def. 2)  

  • 1873  (1926)  It is the business of the "foregoer" to keep the track however faint it may be on the lake or river.
  • 1921  With a final rush the gaunt, travel-worn dogs galloped through the driving snow, and, eager for the shelter of the trading room, bolted pell-mell through the gathering in the doorway, upsetting several spectators before the driver could halt the runaways by falling headlong upon the foregoer's back and flattening him to the floor.
  • 1963  Of the remaining three [dogs] . . . Carlo, the foregoer and Wolf, the steerer, showed symptoms of the disease.

• 2 n. a man on snowshoes who runs ahead of a dog team making a passable track in new or deep snow.

  See also: forerunner  

  • 1934  Already the Indian foregoer had slid his moccasined feet into his snowshoe thongs and was headed for the gateway. . . .
  • 1955  [He was] a fore-goer, a hardy runner who trotted ahead of the dog-teams to break trail after a snowfall or in unmarked country.