What a winter 🙄

As good as the summer was for “autumn training,” the winter has been terrible for weeks, or rather, months. At the beginning of October, we had a brief spell of snow for two or three days, but since then, it’s mostly been too warm. Or it rained. Or it was at least cold enough that the rain froze. A real disaster for training.

We had to take countless unexpected breaks because our training paths were so slippery that it would have been too dangerous for the dogs. When we were able to train, they still ended up damaging their paws, even with booties, because the trails were so rough. I’ve been training huskies for ten years now, most of that time for racing, but I’ve never experienced such a high bootie wear-and-tear in autumn. Which, of course, is a lot of wasted material and money, but the bigger issue was that we felt like we had to change the booties every five minutes 😬

And as if we weren’t already behind schedule with our training, the Femundløpet organizers came up with their next brilliant move. Although it had been decided in the fall, at the time of registration, that Norwegian, Swedish, and British dogs would not need a rabies vaccination, on the evening of November 30th, we suddenly received the opposite message. For fairness, it should be mentioned that it’s not actually the Femundløpet organization demanding the vaccination, but the IFSS, the International Federation of Sleddog Sports, as the Femundløpet is also the World Championship. However, in previous World Championships held in Norway and Sweden, the IFSS had always made exceptions since the national regulations neither require nor recommend rabies vaccinations, because fortunately, rabies doesn’t exist here. To be precise, it’s even questionable whether veterinarians who vaccinate dogs that don’t travel outside of Norway and Sweden, without a medical need to do so, are violating ethical professional standards. But even if we were to accept that, vaccinating during the peak of training is absolutely the wrong time. You can imagine how thrilled most mushers were about that. So, I spent the whole Sunday wondering whether I should scrap the Femund plans or go ahead and vaccinate in December. I had almost decided on the former when the weather forecast made me change my mind. Again, warm weather, rain, and icy conditions were predicted, meaning very poor training conditions, if training would even be possible at all. So, somewhat reluctantly, I decided to have the A-team vaccinated on Monday morning. Another training break.

How much this will affect our plans remains to be seen. We’ve kept the option open to go to the Femund. But if we determine beforehand that we’ve had too many training setbacks, we may have to drop those plans after all.

For the past week, we’ve finally been able to go sledding, not on all the trails yet, but at least it feels more like winter again 😉

And so, we send you Christmas greetings from snowy Lapland and wish you a fantastic start to the New Year 🎅🏻🎄🥳