Everybody, meet Wild Joe.
Who is this, you tepidly ask, eyes glazed over because he’s not a wolf or husky or anything? Is he an OC? A radical alteration of a canon character? Wildly out of place among the cast? No to all but the last. He’s a scrapped character from early in Balto’s production. His design here is a combination of the (I believe) only two leaked pieces of concept art featuring him.

The novelization calls the dog Steele races against at the film’s start Wild Joe, and I assume this is because the author ripped the unused name straight from the unused character. That made me imagine this dog as an adversary/foil to Steele. I decided that he was worth adding back into the story because he could be used to provide some insight into how Steele fucks over other dogs. Like, what, Balto’s the only person Steele has negatively impacted the life of? Yeah right.

You may also notice he’s got on a collar that’s a bit similar to Steele’s. Funny, that.