Settling in for the Season
Updated: Aug 15
After two months of holiday, I’m back with the dogs above the Arctic Circle!
During these two months, I was lucky enough to go sailing in Croatia with family friends, hiking and cycling through the Swiss Alps with Mum and Dad, backpacking through Montenegro and Albania, relaxing in Sweden, and road-tripping around the Lofoten Islands (Norway) with Jessie.
Jess wrote a great blog post about our road-trip! If you feel like checking it out (you might have to translate it from French), here is the link: Jessie’s Blog
One week ago, Jessie and I moved into our private apartment at our new workplace! We’ve put in a lot of work to make it feel cozy, and we’re pretty happy with the results. Our contracts don’t technically start until September, so we’re using this time to settle in and start training the dogs.
Training Season
August is already bringing some cold mornings - even as low as 5°C! It’s generally safe to train the dogs in temperatures up to 13°C, of course stopping for water breaks. The first training runs we did were 7km. We each took a vehicle (Martin with 12 dogs on the quad, me with 10 dogs on a wagon, and Jessie with 12 dogs on a quad). It’s good practice to be solely responsible for a whole training team. If you encounter problems (e.g. the line gets tangled, or you have to switch dog positions), you have to fix the problems alone.
In April, I hope to participate in the 150km Tobacco Trail Race with 8 dogs. Jessie and I will train this team together throughout the season, and we’ve already started to put a draft team together. One of our biggest obstacles is having to train a command leader from scratch. A good command leader can take years to become confident, so we’re under a bit of a time crunch with only 9 months until the race.
Currently, we’re taking a few dogs for walks in the forest, to see if any of them already know the commands of ‘vänster’ (left) and höger (right). Floki was motivated but not super successful, and Johnny was a bit distracted, with a mission to pee on every tree. When we find a dog (or dogs) that we think has potential, we can start training them with more dedication - on a bike or with a small team on the quad.
Our draft racing team is as follows:
Floki - Puffi
Sigrid - Johnny
Ivy - Dalai
Taiga - Ronny
Kola - Jesse
We will train a team of 10 dogs, and narrow it down to 8 shortly before the race. This team will most likely change during the training season, but for now, I have a good feeling about it.
Left and middle: training season! 8-10 dogs on the wagon. Right: Floki
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