End of the Season

It’s official - I only have one more day left working at Pojmis Kennel! How on earth did time move so fast? The snow is melting quickly (we can actually see our driveway now, although every time we step on it, we get muddy shoes), and it’s been raining a lot.

Cuddles with Thunder!

On Wednesday we had our last tour. Since the snow is bad on the lake, we’d been running tours like we did in December. This involved the sleds going out the back of the kennel, around a really bad corner, over the road, and doing a silly little loop in the forest. It’s only 5km, and we had to go twice because the bigger groups of guests come with ~30pax, so that also involved turning the sleds around in the kennel. During our peak season (December, January), we only had 6 of us working in the kennel. For these tours these past couple of weeks, we’ve had to source extra guides from the hotel to make the trail as safe as possible. We made a map of the trail so that everyone knew where they had to be.

Our LGE plan. We needed it.

One of the female puppies! She's the most distinctive thus far.

I don’t know how I’m going to walk away from all of these dogs - I think Jessie is going to have to physically drag me away. And I’m going to have to get dragged away from Jessie too, come to think of it. The dogs are eating less now since they aren’t very active anymore, and they get free-run around the kennel most days. We’ve also started filling their bowls with water during the day, since it’s always positive temperature (only dipping below 0°C at night). Bambi’s puppies have opened their eyes, but their eyes are all blue - they will change in the next few weeks. I believe on Monday we will give them all names.

Tonight we are cooking dinner for our friends/landlords, Victor, Oskar and Philip, to say “thanks for the house and hopefully see you soon”! Viktor said that he would bring over his caravan-converted-sauna too. As a household, we have prepared tacos, nachos and raspberry cheesecake. On Tuesday there is a staff party, and we have the option to sleep at the hotel. Jessie and I took up the offer pretty quickly. On Wednesday we will depart to go to Tromsø for a few days… ROADTRIP!! Next week, I’m journeying over to Finland to help in a much smaller kennel for 7 weeks. I’ve also recently purchased some camping gear, so I hope to make use of it during my days off in Finland and explore a new area. But I will be sad to leave Sweden (however briefly), since I love the language (no I can’t speak it well at all), and I’ve grown used to the currency conversion (100sek = ~15aud). I love this house and Överkalix and all of the dogs, so it’s going to be super hard to leave. But I’m sure I’ll be back… Jess and I are already planning to come back for a week in May/June to go camping under the midnight sun.