On October 30, 1915, three days after the ship was abandoned, Shackleton ordered the dogs shot. The sled teams that had been maintained through the long drift and that had become attached to individual crew members were killed on the ice. Macklin, who had driven one of the dog teams and had become genuinely fond of the animals, performed some of the killings. The accounts of this event in the expedition diaries are among the hardest passages to read — not because the decision was wrong (it was the correct decision in the circumstances) but because the men who made and carried it out understood exactly what it cost.
McNish’s cat, Mrs. Chippy, was also killed at this point, for the same reasons. McNish had adopted the cat during the voyage; she had become a ship’s mascot. Her death contributed to the deterioration of the relationship between McNish and Shackleton that would culminate in the denial of the Polar Medal.
The practical reality of the dogs extended to their use as food. Seal and penguin were the primary protein sources during the drift and on Elephant Island, but the dog carcasses were also consumed. This is recorded in the diaries matter-of-factly, as the practical survival decision it was. The men who had been most attached to the animals were the same men who ate them.
This is part of what makes the expedition accounts more honest than their popular reputation suggests. They do not sanitize the survival. They record what was eaten, what was killed, what was argued about, who was disliked. Orde-Lees — the storekeeper, the man generally disliked by the crew — kept the most detailed diary in part, one suspects, because he had fewer friends to protect.