Our two boys Fignon and Miguel are sold!

What did you do under christmas? We drove our dogs :)
Here it was Jörgs part...

...and here mine.

And we have two dogs for sale. Two brothers out of Öre - Cruella (R.Johannessen, IM Haaland), born july 2010. Both are about 28 kg, very nice, happy and friendly dogs. They did all the training in our team from fall until now. (this you find also at our webside www.flandriens-husky-kennel.com, even the link to stamtavla.no)

Miguel:

Fignon:

We wish our family, friends, sponsors and supporters Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Team Flandriens, Katy and Jörg

Puppytraining

Our adult dogs had a day off today so I took the chance to train our puppies. It´s a lot of fun with them, they run very nice and are very eager. They really became sleddogs the last few weeks and even little Tyler is now a sleddog. She is 5 weeks younger then the others and got her first time in harness last week.

Before the start. Jaja and Coppi as leaddogs. Jaja shows her kids how crazy they have to be...and they really get it very fast.
After the run it is easier to take a picture. Here José on the left and Giovanni on the right.

Sivtsov left, Gira right

With the other five it´s not much better. Here Stijn and again Jaja in lead, Coppi besides Tyler to fill up the team.

They run so fast that the image is blurred ;)))

Bartali left, Andrew right

Tyler, the little sleddog :)

Fausto left, Felice right. This two are the only crocodiles in the puppyteam, they try to bite in the lines during the start. But we are on a good way to teach them that we don´t like that.

New sleds!

Today we received two christmas presents :))) We got two new sleds from Danler-dogsleds plus 4 new pairs of plastics for the runners.

Do you think they look small?
Hm, maybe nothing for Finnmarkslopet ;))) This sleds we ordered for tourist-driving. They are perfect for 2-4 dogs and are named "Husky-buggy". They look really cute. Btw, the runnerplastic is for our "real" sled for the competitions.

Trailbreaker

After no snow in november until the beginning of december we got now enough snow. Now I´m thinking that it could stop snowing...The dogs had a hard job the last days, every time when we were out they had to break the trail. The good thing is that they learned a lot and plow now safe through the snow and find the trail. But now it should snow less and so they can relax on better trails. It´s also enough snow to train big teams so that we have to drive out only with one team. To hook up 16 dogs is no problem anymore :)))
I have no pics from today because it was so bad snowy and windy weather. But during the christmas holidays we will raise the distance and hopefully I get better weather to make some nice pics.
And by the way, only two days left for the shortest day of the year, then we can look foreward to longer days! Ok, only minute by minute in the beginning but then the daylight comes back with big steps ;)))

Today Susan and I trained one 10 dog team. It was very windy with a bit snow. I really like that kind of weather and it seems that our dogs liked it, too. The trail was of course blown away, but for Luis and Jaja in lead it was no problem.

From this 10 dogs I have to choose 8 for the Finnmarkslopet-team. But I have 3 month left...
Susan has full control over everything ;))) She runs long parts of the trail by her self, but sometimes she ask for a ride in the sled. There she gets soon bored and climb on the sled forth and back :)

I was thinking about the song "Sunshine reggae" for this film...

The real training is started

Last weekend we could finally start the real training. We got enough snow on sunday but decided to take the ATV from saturday to monday to train a block of longer rounds. But today even we came onto the sled and we opened the trail with our dogs. Jörg on the runners and I in the sled to help the dogs if necessary. But we were really impressed about our 2 year old dogs. Jaja and Didi found the way through the svamps nearly without any comment and take every corner and swing we did last year. It was really unbelieveable how sure and save the two girls plow through the snow and found the way that they run in december 2010 the last time! I have it always hard to take the right turns (luckily Jörg knows it much better :)))) and that after 10 years on our trails...

It was fun to be on the sled again :))))))))))