Arctic sleddogcenter

Season has started!
First individual guests have been driving with our dogs. Trails have been quite hard and fast this last two weeks, so that I gave only 3-4 dogs per person and everybody was allowed to drive own sled instead of sharing one. 2 persons on one sled would mean 5-6 dogs pulling in front but still only one person to stand on the brake. For smaller persons no chance to stop this kind of team.
Today there was also a first bigger group of kids getting a ride on a sled, 400 meters in about 5 min...
This week we had also a meeting about season start, education about nothern lights and most common injuries of sleddogs and some training about extinguishing fires (everyone managed to finish the task without losing any eybrows...)
Weather has been quite changing this last days, one day you feel like you are freezing to your handlebar at -20 the next day you are sweating like crazy because the temperature went up to zero again... But winter will win in the end like every year...
If there are no groups comming training still goes on, driving 24 km will be the aim of next week for my dogs.

Arctic sleddog center

Finally training on snow!
This weeks we had students from Muonios wildernesguideschool participating in training and taking care of the dogs. So it was a good opportunity to drive some longer tours around 14-16 km... with all in all 16 dogs per round... a good week...

Olosvuoma kota

On wednesday we also made our lunchbrake on the trail, but dogs didnt really understand why we have to stop after 8 km and start to make fire...( Its always amazing how 4 dogs manage to make one big knot of themselves within minutes... Joiku and Berlin even managed to turn the whole team around looking to where we came from...) At least there was no broken harness or rope... next time we might drive a bit longer before having a break...

Comming back after lunchbreak

Boreal and Ciao

Last trip of the day... 6km round for Dee Dee who had puppies and doesnt run longer yet

Arctic sleddog center

A typical training day:
Training dogs is quite a hord job to do. Works starts at 8. First thing is taking meat out of the freezer (180kg at the moment) in the meantime sombody else will divide the defrosted meat from the previous day for the different groups and make food for the puppies.( There are about 30 puppies at the moment which still eat twice a day solid food.).
Next I'll prepare soup for my dogs some meet,dryfood and 50 liters of warm water.( As the temperatures stay below 0 now we canot leave water in the fences for the dogs to drink and there is not enough water in the snow, so we flavour the water to make them drink) To bring the soup to my dogs I can use a little plastic sled so I dont have to carry the water.
After giving soup to the dogs (this week we had quite some new snow, so sometimes it was quite a challenge to find the bowls again...) I'll refill the soupbox with more soup for after the runs, bring the quad to my starting area and close the gates so that the dogs can run free.
Most of my dogs can run free with each other so I open one or two fence at the time, the dogs run around a bit and then they come to the starting place where I put them on a chain waiting to start.(sometimes specally if you want to be fast, some dogs might also descide thats quit fun to run back to the fence again or play around with the dogs staying back... then you have just to go back and get them again...) Once all dogs that are going to the run are there I'll start to harness them. While harnessing they are supposed to stay quietly I dont want to struggle with them, at the beginning of the season some younger dogs hafe to be reminded about how to behave, so if they start to jump I tell them to sit(paikka) and if it doesent work I'll go to the next dog and try it again afterwards. Some dogs like to chew on theyr harnesses because they are so nervous to go so these I'll harness last and I keep an eye on them once they have the harness on.
Now I can open my starting gate look a last time if all ropes are ok, the quad is secured by the brakes and tied with a rope to a tree.

As soon as I start to put the leaddogs in front of the quad, the noiselevel gets up...the dogs harness is fixed to the pulling line the collar goes to the neckline. As soon as all dogs are in line I put an extra coat on open the startingrope and then we start... This week we drove 9 km what took about 45 minutes. When comming back most of the dogs can run free again once the harness is off . I'll walk to the fences call the dogs home(kotiin) and then they get soup again. Before my lunchtime I'll do another round and then after lunch one ore two more. After the last round I'll clean all fences then I'll go to prepare the food( meat, dryfood and water) then feeding. ( At some days we also get another group to take care of thet means less training then and more basic work)
This week I had also a first drive with the sled to test how well it goes already... and it was great!...