Our First Winter Season
Since the preparation of our first winter season took so much time there was unfortunately no time left to update the blog. But we hope you follow us on Instagram or Facebook to regularly see new photos and videos of our daily life.
Before we go on with an update about the start of the winter we would like to wish you all a happy new year. Take all the good memories from the past with you and go into new adventures and experiences with hope and happiness; so 2022 has no other chance than to become a good year 😃🎉🥳
As you may know Corona slowed down our plans of building up the kennel for adventurous longer tours with dogs and guests but anyway we wanted to start the business and decided to offer half day and day tours this winter.
While the snow ❄️ was waiting for the new year to come the cold 🥶 was present already in the early winter. From mid of November until first week of December we had low temperatures of -20°C, many days much colder with -30°C to -35°C at home what means even colder on the trail. Since there was not much snow isolating the ground we were a bit afraid of freezing pipes in the dog food kitchen the whole time. It looked quite good… until the last day of this freezing period. Coming out to prepare the dog food the bad surprise was waiting: no water 💦 in the dog food kitchen and guest toilet 😬 that meant a lot of work to defrost the pipes before they break. Since it was below -30°C and Raffi was working in the dog food kitchen while Yvonne had to go to Arvidsjaur we put on the electric heating in the main house and additional heaters in the dog food kitchen. While Raffi was trying all tricks you could find on the internet (beside a warming cable in the pipe) like putting salt or rödsprit into the pipe, the use of electricity seemed to reach the maximum amount of what was possible… and in the afternoon even all electricity ⚡️ was gone for some hours 😖 and that meant also that you couldn’t heat the main house anymore. These typical old heating systems in Sweden are possible to use with fire wood (what we do most of the time) or electricity. Sounds as if a lack of electricity is no problem. That was what I was thinking before we moved here and I learned that even when you are heating with wood you need electricity for the pump because otherwise the water is not transported trough the system. Ok, so take some blankets, let the water run to prevent it from freezing in the main house too and wait for the electricity to come back 😏 at least the electricity was back after a while and Raffi went on to defrost the pipe until half past ten in the evening… with no success so far. But the measures were taking effect over night and in the morning we had water again 😀 but this was just beginning of December and more cold days were supposed to come.
But you are probably more interested to hear something about the dogs 🐕 and tours. Already the first weekend in December we did our first tours with guests. The trails were bumpy and difficult to drive because there was so few snow that it was difficult at all to find trails you could already run on. But the guests were motivated, no question about the motivation of the dogs needed 😉 we had some nice tours with a glimpse of sun ☀️ and yes, cold temperatures most of the time. Since Christmas the high season is on and we have tours every day – except the resting days for the dogs of course. The dogs are doing a great job, always motivated and happy. One week ago our puppies had their first birthday, so officially they are no puppies anymore. And indeed, they are neither looking like puppies nor can you see a difference in the work. But they stay our „puppies“ until we have the next ones 😂
With the new year also the snow found its way to us. With snow and wind the trails were gone several times the last days. So, Raffi got up early in the morning to prepare the trails to make it a little easier for the dogs and me on tour. But I can just repeat: the dogs are so motivated that they also jump through deep snow like it’s nothing to search for the trail and pull a sled at the same time.
Today they have a resting day and beside taking care and cuddle dogs we have time to shovel some more snow out of the dog yards, from the roofs, etc. 😅 then we have some more busy days before it gets a bit less next week and we hopefully can prepare more trails and maybe do another private tour for us.
For all who are waiting for pictures… they follow now 😉 and if you want to join a tour, just take contact and we arrange it.
