Winter?

At least a small hint of it. After two days with some degrees minus and fog we got an amazing day today. -6 degrees and sun the whole day :))) Our lake is complete covered with ice and like every year we could not hold back to test the ice. By the way, the ice was holding and we come from the lake without wet feeds ;))

Even foggy evenings could be great!
What a beautyful day today. This morning I was at the lake by myself. You see, the lake is covered with ice.

The morningsun was shining through the frost-covered branches.

And at the ice of the lake.

Ok, I was not on my own at the lake ;))) Susan was of course with me, it´s not possible to do something without her :))) But so she had to come with me onto the ice to make this picture.

The fox and the rabbit were here some days ago when the ice was not that save...

When Jörg was coming home from work, we went to the lake to make the "ice-thickness-test". The ice it´s about 5 cm thick, so it´s thick enough that a horse can walk on it.

That looks all very well for the lake and the swamps (there is a lot of water in the swamps this year because of the heavy rain), but unfortunally the weatherforecast is not that good. In the morning they wrote that it should be cold from the beginning of November, now they promise warm weather (about +5 degrees) from the weekend and the whole next week :( But maybe they promise cold again tomorrow...never knows and we can´t change it ;)))

Today we trained with snow under the paws of our dogs. It was very nice and silent and we all loved it. So I got motivated to test our new videocamera that was lying in the drawer now for nearly one year (!!!). Sorry for some strange pictures, I found the anti-shaking-button after we was home again...But I´m learning and maybe someday I manage it to make a good video :))) But at least I managed it to have some musik within the film!!!



Und hier kommt das Filmchen ohne Musik für unsere Freunde in Deutschland :))) Wegen der Rechte bei der Musik kann man das in D ja sonst nicht abspielen...

Aktiv Hund

We are very happy that Ägna AB (www.agna.se) with their Aktiv-series sponsor us one more season! We really believe in their products and used them already last season. We had no wrist problems with our dogs during the whole season and two other longdistance-drivers used it and said the same like we. It works!
If somebody is interested in the products, order it via us, there will be a special price for dogdrivers :)))
Aktiv Hund, easy to use and really helpful to prevent wrist problems. And only natural ingrediences!

This night we had the first real frost. It was -6 degrees in the morning and the lake starts freezing. But the forecast promise warmer days for the next weekend :( But the winter will come, that´s for sure ;)

The first ice on the lake
Jörg was training the dogs - and you see he has the downjacket on. It was really cold.

Pedro in the front and Didi behind him. They thought it´s better when it´s colder ;))

Finnmarkslopet

Now the first starting order for Finnmarkslopet is online. I got the bibnumber 35 - if nobody withdraw until march. The whole list you can find here http://www.finnmarkslopet.no/media/dokument/2011-10/Forste%20trekning%202012%20PDF.pdf

Kiruna symposium

This weekend I drove with my ManMat-equipment to Kiruna at the sleddog-symposium who was arranged of the Kiruna sleddog club. First, everybody who had the time to come and didn´t show up missed really a lot and should blame him/her self! Second, many thanks to Mats Pettersson and Lotta for their hospitality. Sven Engholm and I slept over in their house and we had a lot of interesting dogtalks until late at night.

Dr. Jerome A. Vanek spoke about stretching and massage of dogs. And he did it in a really funny and understandable way. We all laughs a lot :)))
So, forget about stretching your dogs before the race if you see this ;))) But he explains also a way to warm up dogs without that much time :)

After this we heard from Hans Gatt how he treats his dogs with respect and about his training before the Quest and Iditarod.

Here one of his trainings-shedules. Are you now sad that you didn´t show up :))) BUT I have a bit more informations, I did some secret-talk with Hans after the symposium ;))

Here Hans and I philosophize about harnesses. He took a skibelt and a Lash-harness from ManMat home to Whitehorse :)

Make an educated guess who is creeping under every sled in Kiruna?

Tim White of course!!! I guess there is nobody else in the whole world who is that interested in dogsleds! He spokes at the symposium about sleddogs in general - and everybody can feel that this came really from the bottom of his heard!