Why do the dogs wear boots on their feet?

We put cloth (cordura) boots on the dogs feet to help protect the webbing between their toes from getting what musher's call “fissures” or splits in their skin caused by ice crystals of cold fresh snowfall. Also the boots protects the dogs feet from getting snowballs forming in the hair and from ice or frozen gravel on the trails that we run on. The dogs generally like their booties...once we had a dog (Song) who liked booties so much he ate 20 boots during a race! We know this because we counted them in his poop afterwards.