As good as the summer was for „autumn training,“ the winter has been terrible for weeks, or rather, months. At the beginning of October, we had a brief spell of snow for two or three days, but since then, it’s mostly been too warm. Or it rained. Or it was at least cold enough that the rain froze. A real disaster for training.
We had to take countless unexpected breaks because our training paths were so slippery that it would have been too dangerous for the dogs. When we were able to train, they still ended up damaging their paws, even with booties, because the trails were so rough. I’ve been training huskies for ten years now, most of that time for racing, but I’ve never experienced such a high bootie wear-and-tear in autumn. Which, of course, is a lot of wasted material and money, but the bigger issue was that we felt like we had to change the booties every five minutes 😬
And as if we weren’t already behind schedule with our training, the Femundløpet organizers came up with their next brilliant move. Although it had been decided in the fall, at the time of registration, that Norwegian, Swedish, and British dogs would not need a rabies vaccination, on the evening of November 30th, we suddenly received the opposite message. For fairness, it should be mentioned that it’s not actually the Femundløpet organization demanding the vaccination, but the IFSS, the International Federation of Sleddog Sports, as the Femundløpet is also the World Championship. However, in previous World Championships held in Norway and Sweden, the IFSS had always made exceptions since the national regulations neither require nor recommend rabies vaccinations, because fortunately, rabies doesn’t exist here. To be precise, it’s even questionable whether veterinarians who vaccinate dogs that don’t travel outside of Norway and Sweden, without a medical need to do so, are violating ethical professional standards. But even if we were to accept that, vaccinating during the peak of training is absolutely the wrong time. You can imagine how thrilled most mushers were about that. So, I spent the whole Sunday wondering whether I should scrap the Femund plans or go ahead and vaccinate in December. I had almost decided on the former when the weather forecast made me change my mind. Again, warm weather, rain, and icy conditions were predicted, meaning very poor training conditions, if training would even be possible at all. So, somewhat reluctantly, I decided to have the A-team vaccinated on Monday morning. Another training break.
How much this will affect our plans remains to be seen. We’ve kept the option open to go to the Femund. But if we determine beforehand that we’ve had too many training setbacks, we may have to drop those plans after all.
For the past week, we’ve finally been able to go sledding, not on all the trails yet, but at least it feels more like winter again 😉
And so, we send you Christmas greetings from snowy Lapland and wish you a fantastic start to the New Year 🎅🏻🎄🥳
It’s now been three and a half months since the last post and a lot has happened since then… But as always, there is rarely time to devote to the blog. That’s how it is right now in the middle of the night as I write these lines. But before the winter season really begins what is in two weeks, you should get another update.
So, let’s try it chronologically: anyone who follows us on Facebook or Instagram will not have been able to avoid getting to know our puppies. On August 13th Lumene had three puppies, Tornado, Chinook and Blixten, actually in that order. The dad of the gang is Storm, our new addition from April. And yes, this litter wasn’t planned. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that Storm was digging his way between cages to female dogs in heat. But whatever, the combination was very interesting genetically and Lumene was such a great mother back in the “Lion King” litter that we had no doubt that everything would go well this time too. And so it was. The puppies were very large at birth at 470g to 510g and were therefore agile. That changed a bit after two or three weeks, when we thought that they would definitely climb out of the box soon, but they were rather sluggish. But that was probably because they were still too heavy for their legs. This time the choice of name was almost obvious, on the one hand because of their father Storm, and on the other hand because of the stormy and thundery weather shortly before their birth. We first thought about the Swedish words for lightning and thunder – Blixten and Åska. But then we decided against Åska because we didn’t think it was suitable for guests. Because if you don’t know the Swedish alphabet, you probably read Aska or hear Oskar, both of which are kind of stupid. So we chose Tornado instead, appropriately the same word in Swedish and German. The name for Chinook – a wind in the Rocky Mountains – was chosen by our friends at Korpkullen Huskies, to whom he moved when he was just under nine weeks old. Blixten and Tornado are now three months old and currently live with Rafiki, whom they can terrorize with their stormy nature. But they are still too small to come up on the hut, where Rafiki loves to lie and relax and observe the surroundings.
What else has happened: on the first weekend in September we were in Rovaniemi, the first time together away from our kennel for a day and a half. There we visited the sled dog symposium, which was held for the first time… and of course Santa Claus with Joël 🎅🏻 The symposium is of course not comparable to the one in Kiruna, but there were still some interesting and inspiring lectures and the opportunity to exchange ideas with other mushers. The most influential thing for the rest of our autumn was our conversation with Petter Karlsson, world champion in long-distance racing and, among others, multiple winner of the Finnmarksløpet. We almost worked for Petter a few years ago, so we had been in loose contact for a while. We now had the opportunity to talk to him and his wife Angela about, among other things, building our own kennel and the idea of perhaps racing again… and we promptly received a personal invitation to take part in the 320km long Metsjövidda Fjällrace organized by Petter and Angela. Who could resist that? But first we had to do a bit of organizing. Because just two or three days before the symposium, we had promised regular guests an overnight tour, which would have been exactly the day after the race. Luckily, their friends, who will also be there, hadn’t booked their flights yet, so we were able to move this tour backward a week. At the same time, a friend who is currently with us has agreed to look after Joël and the remaining dogs for the duration of the race. So we were able to plan to take part with two teams. Funnily enough, just two or three days after the confirmation, guests from last year asked for a tour this very week – although we thought the date would be quite practical at a time when there wasn’t so much going on 😂🙈 but so did these guests were flexible and are now coming after the race… so we hope that everything goes as planned and that we can finally get a taste of racing again in mid-January. The race is absolutely not intended as a race for our dogs, but rather to gain experience, practice checkpoint routines in “real life” and get to know the atmosphere of a race. Accordingly, the strategy will be very restrictive and only focused on creating a positive experience for the dogs, regardless of the time we need. But more on that later.
Of course, we had already started training before the symposium, but now we are working even harder towards a goal. Because let’s be honest, just to go on tours, the dogs wouldn’t have to train according to a set plan in August and the training distances that we do now wouldn’t be necessary either. So you could make your life easier – since there’s always not enough time for everything anyway… But you should also know what you’re doing something for. We want to make dreams come true for our guests, as our name suggests, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pursue your own dreams. so, we are happy to accept the additional pressure we put on us ourselves.
At the end of September we had our first guest for autumn training this season. I would say that despite a few tours and stays at other kennels before, he was still able to learn a lot 😉 During a training overnight stay in the tent, our (older) puppies, Maya and her siblings, were able to practice what it’s like to sleep on the stakeout on a tour for the first time… and four out of five mastered it confidently. Only Max somehow didn’t feel like it. Not that he was jumping around at the stakeout or anything, no, he just wouldn’t stop crying. And since Raffi and Joël had joined us for dinner, we decided to postpone Max’s exercise until another time and he was allowed to go home. But he was just as unhappy alone in the cage… so Raffi quickly put Nala to him. After some wild playing, there was actually peace at some point. By the way, Max is now a perfect dog during breaks in training and lies down to relax, not always, as our dogs often think they’d rather keep going, but at least he’s one of those who is basically calm for the time being.
So here we are again at training… which has been happening on white ground for about a month now. So far so good. However, while it feels like it’s snowing a lot all over Scandinavia, here it’s either moving southeast or northwest and we still have just a few centimeters of snow. So while everyone is happily posting pictures of sledding, we are still training with the atv. As much as I want to go sledding, it didn’t make sense from a time perspective if it was only possible with a small team, because then I would have to essentially clone myself in order to train all the dogs according to the plan. So I’ll probably have to be patient and freeze on the atv… because there’s no shortage of cold and you feel it much more on the atv than on the sled 🥶 But what won’t you do for your dreams 😉
Der Winter ist da, mit erstmals -20° heute Morgen 🥶👏 und während sich die meisten Menschen in ihren Betten nochmal umdrehen und die Decke etwas enger um ihren Körper ziehen, gehen wir raus und sind glücklich. Diese Temperaturen führen dazu, dass die Seen zufrieren und auch die Sümpfe, die normalerweise viel Wärme im Boden speichern und hoffentlich auch die kleineren Wasserläufe, die nicht so schlimm erscheinen wie ein großer See, aber in Wirklichkeit mehr und länger eisige Temperaturen brauchen, damit das fließende Wasser friert, um es sicher mit den Schlitten überqueren zu können.
Aber ein Teil des Winters fehlt noch: der Schnee ❄️ wir hatten letzte Woche ein bisschen Schnee, aber am Freitag und Samstag waren es Plusgrade und es hat geregnet… und seitdem haben wir perfekte Bedingungen zum Eislaufen, aber nicht zum Training. Ein großer Teil unserer Trails besteht aus purem Eis, so dass wir gezwungen sind, eine Trainingspause einzulegen. Vielleicht würden einige Teile funktionieren, aber natürlich muss man zuerst dorthin gelangen, und das ist das Problem. Auch wenn man die Hunde in den Anhänger packt und ein bisschen fährt, haben wir immer noch vereiste Waldwege oder die Trails sind sehr kurz, so dass es keinen Sinn macht, dort hin zu fahren. Und man muss bedenken, dass die Hunde auf einem guten Trainingsniveau sind, also gewinnt man mit schlechtem Training jetzt nichts, riskiert aber ernsthafte Verletzungen, wenn man sie auf Eis laufen lässt. Fast jeden Herbst hat man diese Zeit, in der man eine Woche nicht trainieren kann und man sich einfach gedulden muss, bis die Bedingungen besser werden… Geduld – nicht so meine Stärke 😂🙈, aber wir machen das Beste draus, verbringen viel Zeit im Freilauf oder auf Spaziergängen und hatten sogar Zeit, den Sonnenuntergang über Glommersträsk einzufangen 😊
Während es etwas weiter im Norden schon Schnee gab ❄️ wurden unsere Trainingspläne über den Haufen geschmissen bei sehr warmen Temperaturen um 12° und einer sehr hohen Luftfeuchtigkeit ☁️💦 klar, wir sind mit unseren Plänen sowieso sehr flexibel, weil wir sie immer an die Bedürfnisse unserer Hunde anpassen, speziell der Puppies, die noch nicht ausgewachsen sind. Aber nach zwei geplanten Pausentagen hatten wir uns eigentlich darauf gefreut, die Hunde am Wochenende wieder fahren zu können. Na gut, so haben wir ein bisschen die Zeit zusammen im Freilauf genossen.
Und was ihr vielleicht schon auf Instagram gesehen habt: wir haben ein neues Familienmitglied. Sein Name ist Olaf. Er ist sechs Jahre alt und kommt ursprünglich aus einem kleinen Rennkennel in Norwegen. Seit diesem Sommer war er in Schweden in einem mittelgroßen Kennel, aber es hat sich gezeigt, dass er sich mit zu vielen Hunden um ihn herum nicht wirklich wohl fühlt. Daher wurden wir gefragt, ob wir ihn nehmen möchten… und schaut euch den tollen Körper, die besondere Farbe und – das Beste von allem – dieses Lachen an. Könntet ihr da widerstehen?
Im Moment ist Olaf mit Lumene zusammen, die ist nicht ganz so verrückt wie unsere Puppies. Und vom ersten Schritt in den Zwinger schien es so als fühle er sich zu Hause 🥰 er kann nicht genug Streicheleinheiten bekommen, also wird er wohl einer der Gästelieblinge im Winter 😉
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 😉
