While there was snow ❄️ a bit more in the north the last days our training plan was smashed because of very warm temperatures around 12° and high humidity in the air ☁️💦 of course, we are anyway very flexible with the plan because everything is adapted to the needs of our dogs, especially the puppies who are not completely grown up yet. But after two planned resting days we were looking forward to run them on the weekend. Ok, instead we enjoyed some time in the free run together.
And what you might have already seen on Instagram: we have a new family member. His name is Olaf. He is six years old and originally from a small race kennel in Norway. He has been in Sweden since this summer in a medium sized kennel but it turned out that he doesn’t feel comfortable with too many dogs around him. So, we were asked if we want to take him… and look at his nice body, special fur color, and best of all: his smile. Could you regret?
For the moment he stays together with Lumene who is not as crazy as the puppies and from the first step into the cage it seemed as he feels home 🥰 he can’t get enough cuddles, so he might probably be one of the favourite guest dogs in winter 😉
Eines unserer größten Bauprojekte dieses Jahr – neben den Hundezwingern und der Grillkota – war das Upgrade von „Gammelgården“, dem alten schwedischen Holzhaus, das sogar eine Backstube mit echtem Steinofen zu bieten hat. Klar, diesen Raum haben wir nicht angerührt, aber am Rest haben wir gearbeitet, um eine Hundefutterküche und Behandlungsraum, Futterlager, Equipmentlager und eine Gäste-Toilette zu errichten.
Ihr habt davon ja bereits gehört als wir nach dem Wasser gegraben haben 💦 und jetzt ist es geschafft ✅ fast. Einige kleinere Details stehen in den nächsten Tagen noch an, außerdem mehr Regale als Lagerfläche. Aber alles kann schon benutzt werden 😃
Und ratet mal, was ziemlich speziell ist? Alles Holz, das wir für die Wände, Decke, Regale, etc. verwendet haben, war eigentlich Abfallholz und sollte weggeschmissen oder verbrannt werden. Könnt ihr euch vorstellen wie schade das gewesen wäre? Man kan so tolle Sachen noch daraus machen. Und gleichzeitig tut man der Natur einen Gefallen und schützt die Bäume 🌲
Die Schuhe haben wir schon einsortiert, Jacken und Hosen folgen später. Das Outdoor Koch-Geschirr bzw. Equipment wartet noch in Kisten bis ein weiteres „Abfallholz-Regal“ fertig ist. Und natürlich kommt auch noch ein bisschen Deko.
Aber hier könnt ihr schonmal den aktuellen Status sehen…
One of our biggest building projects this year – beside dog kennels and grill kota – was the upgrade of „Gammelgården“. That is a very old typical Swedish wood house where you could even find a bakery with a real stone oven. Of course, we haven’t touched this room but the rest was worked on to build a dog food kitchen and treatment room, food storage, equipment storage and a guest toilet.
You already heard about that when we were digging for the water 💦 and now it’s done ✅ almost. Some minor details will be made in the next days, also some more shelves for storage place. But everything is usable right now 😃
And guess what’s special? All wood we used for walls, ceiling, shelves, etc. is waste wood, planned to be thrown away or burned. Can you imagine what a pity that would have been? You can do so many great things out of it. And at the same time do a favor to nature and save the trees 🌲
We already put the shoes in place, the jackets and trousers will come later. The outdoor cooking equipment is waiting in a box until another „waste wood shelf“ is ready. And also some decoration will follow.
But here you can see pictures of the current status.
When we decided about the name of our company it was important not only to mention our dogs but also our close connection to the place we live and the beautiful nature around us.
Some weeks ago you already got the first impression of the berry season, now everything is full of blueberries and also lingonberries are almost ready.
Do you remember the young golden eagle 🦅 that lives in the area? Today after berry picking we saw him again. Not in the nest but flying through the forest. Very impressive how eagles manage to fly between narrow trees 🌲 unfortunately he was much too fast to make a picture 📷
But another one was much more patient… a reindeer with great antlers stopped for us to be photographed 😉
And a few days ago “our” moose mum and one year old moose child came for an evening visit…
Last but not least some photos of our dogs, showing there emotions short before start of the training run: 8 year old Lumene is fully concentrated and waits for the starting command while puppies Rafiki, Zazu and Mufasa as well as two year old Mose are really excited and let you see and hear this 😂
You are probably already waiting for the report of our second week of vacation… so, here you are 😉
Of course, the water 💦 for the dog food kitchen was still a big part of the work. But finally all new pipes were in the ground and now our yard looks like a potato field 🥔 But who cares, soon it’s covered with snow ❄️ 😂
But there were also some easy tasks this week, berry picking for example 😋 the “Gold of Lapland” – the cloudberries are ready as well as my favorite beside strawberries – the blueberries.
Our new grill kota is obviously an interesting place, within 5 days it was two times visited by a moose even if it’s only a few meters from the dogs 🐕 what is he doing there? Barbecue? 🥓🍗🍔
On Friday I did a little journey to the Norwegian border to pick up our new family member “Mose” – that means moss. Before that I did several phone calls because it’s still not so easy to enter Norway when you live in Norrbotten. But if the former owner or any other person brings the dog over the border you have to follow a lot of new and quite complicated rules. After all these calls it was still not sure if it will work but we decided to just try it. And in fact, the border was the smallest problem 😉 Sometimes it seems to be better not to ask or think too much 🙈
On the next day it was cold enough to do a short training run, so Mose could stretch out her legs after the journey. Now, it’s unfortunately again very hot 🥵 but in two days it will be better.
After all the work during the last two weeks we did a short hiking trip 🥾 on Sunday, exploring a potential husky trekking trail. While we were walking we heard an eagle crying… and shortly after we found the nest with a young golden eagle 🦅 almost ready to fly out. What a nice end of the week 😊
Since one week we have holiday now… and no, we are not laying on the beach 🏝 enjoying the sun ☀️ that’s anyway not our most favorite kind of vacation, we prefer active holiday 💪😉 but honestly this week was heavier than a whole month of “normal” work 😬
Last weekend the play toys for big boys were already parked…
On Monday Raffi and our neighbor company Nito Last AB started to dig for the water 💦 to our new dog food kitchen. They were digging and digging and digging… after a whole day they finally found the main water pipe with a T-cross, one to the main house, one to the yard – either to the old fountain ⛲️ or to the barn. Both options meant that the pipe must be close to the old “guest house” so we thought we could avoid digging the whole way but just find the old pipe and connect the new one. Great idea 💡👍 Two more days they were digging, first with logical thinking, later with a detector that clearly stated the way of the pipe but even in more than five meters depth there was nothing 😲 in the end we decided to go back to the old plan and put a new pipe over the yard… so, today they (almost) finished this part of the project. The dirt water pipe is still to do but that part is much easier and almost all way already prepared. And the inside work can wait until all outside tasks are done 😉
At least we don’t need to cut so much grass for the next weeks 😂🙈
Beside digging we also prepared the new dog cages. First we had to make the ground even, then put the dog houses in place. The dog houses we built already during the last months so they were just waiting to be used. And it’s much easier to put the dog houses in the cage before the cage is there because they are too big and much too heavy to get them through the doors. After this was done we put big logs around the cages and then the cage elements. Two of the cages will be “jumping cages”. They will have some additional planks on top to prevent dogs from jumping or climbing out of the cage like e.g. Stella already did when she couldn’t wait to be put on the line for training 😏 now, there are some smaller jobs left: finishing the jumping protection, make door locks/openers and fix the food bowl holders.
Last but not least we built up our grill kota. Another challenging project: first of all the quality of the material was quite bad, so after a complaint to the seller he promised that the manufacturer will send somebody on Thursday to build up the kota – as compensation. On Thursday the manufacturer called me that they can’t come today but will come on Friday. Meanwhile we had already prepared the ground. Friday morning we put all parts on place waiting for the guys to come. At 5 p.m. I got a call that they unfortunately can’t manage and that they can check on Monday if they can come next week… are you kidding me? 😳 Ok, we didn’t want to put all parts back in the garage to protect them from rain, so we started to build it up ourselves. Generally not a big thing, but instead of a written instruction with the delivery the seller send a link to an online instruction with nice animation videos. Not really comfortable to check your phone while working on the one hand but more problematic that a lot of parts of the kota where not exactly like the description and animation. The bottom, the corner pieces, the door, the benches, the grill… almost all steps you had to make changes and could guess what is the correct way, some parts were even missing completely. So, we checked pictures from the manufacturer to see if we are correct. At the end we could finish the building process yesterday evening. Now, we only need to finish oiling it. Yesterday night and today it was too much rain 🌧 so, we will do that within the next days. Also the surrounding and decoration will be made in the near future. But after nine days of hard work we had to spend 2-3 hours relaxing with a barbecue in our kota tonight 😋🌭🥗
Let’s see what the next week will bring 😉
By the way: the dogs are doing fine. Joël wants to go for walks with them every day again and again… good for the puppies to learn to walk on the leash 🐕🐾 and Joël’s most favorite thing on the yard is the “brumm brumm” – the atv. He loves to join a ride and next week colder temperatures are promised, so maybe we can go out together for training with the adult dogs 🐶
Oh man, does it only feels like work is never ending???
Look at this…
After a whole weekend of work it still seems like the wood pile is not getting smaller. Ok, maybe that’s because it was not only wood work. Also using half a day to get to the city to buy some more building material, go on with ceiling and floor in Joël’s room, cutting bushes in the free run, etc.
But let me tell you a bit more about the last few weeks: after some warm days end of April it was colder again and at Pentecost – believe it or not – we had 12cm of new snow over night, most in Sweden as you can see on the picture that I stole from Glommersträsk’s Instagram account 😉
So the cold days we used to build new dog houses, meanwhile 3 of 5 are done 🙂 We also made plans about the old house on the yard that we first thought to be the guest house later. But now we decided to use it as bakery (what it is already now), as dog kitchen and medical room, guest toilet and food and equipment storage. But for this we need to put water in the house, so more work on the yard to get water and dirt water pipes connected. And of course, we make plans for a new guest house. But since we anyway had to postpone the longer tours for one season we thought the innovations above are a good step in between 😉
We also got the delivery of more elements for the new dog cages. One we could already add because we prepared the ground last autumn. Three more are waiting for ground preparations that were postponed due to the slowly melting and fresh snow. But within this month the new cages will be ready I guess and also the grillkåta should be in place (maybe the painting will take until July). Except if we are using too much time and energy for our wood pile 😉 We will let you know and show you pictures of the results 🙂
While it is almost summer in Mid-Europe we still have snow up in the north. But after a week with 10-15° already a lot is melted and even some new snow the last days and temperatures below zero can’t deny that the summer is on its way to take over. We already have 16,5h between sunrise and sunset and even longer daylight if you count the time before and after that.
So, we are busy with making plans for all our construction work as soon as the snow is gone… new dog cages, new dog houses, a new grill kåta (a typical hexagonal wooden cabin with a fireplace in the middle), finishing our little relax place in the free run, etc.
Anyway we took some time to add the shorter husky adventures to our web page. So, if you are in the area or travelling trough Lapland in summer don’t miss a visit with us. Below you can get a first impression but read the full descriptions behind the links…
