We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas time even if it was different from previous years.
Today we want to make it short with just some pictures that show the best end of a crazy year: Lumene + Ranger puppies, one day old now 🥰🐕🐾
We wish you all a happy new year 2021 🎉
Today was the day many people are waiting for: winter solstice. That means the shortest day of the year. Wait! Is it not 24h? Yes, of course, also the 21st of December has 24 hours, but it is the day with the shortest time of daylight on the Northern hemisphere. From now on days are getting longer and nights shorter. Many people in the north are missing the sun and are happy to have passed this day.
I don’t really care about how long days and nights are, especially now since we are – unfortunately – not longer living above the Arctic Circle. So, to be correct, we don’t have polar night and also no midnight sun in summer. But we are so close that it is almost as if. Anyway, for me it’s not important if in theory we get more daylight from now on. I am more waiting for nice winter weather, cold and sunny with snow diamonds all around. But it is still much too warm, +2°, not much snow and what we have is very soft now, lakes are not frozen, etc.
So, we can only live from memories of great colors also during the darkest time of the year. And hope we will see it again soon.
Today is the 6th December… not only „Nikolaus“ in Germany but also WINTER ❄️❄️❄️ but it seems that the one who is responsible for the weather is on holiday 🏝🌊☀️
+1° is much too warm for December 😬 The snow is wet and heavy and the swamps still not frozen… where is the real winter? 🥶❄️☃️
Anyway, Raffi was searching for new trails, first with ski 🎿 then with dogs 🐕 and you can be sure he liked the second alternative more 😉
In the meantime Luna and Stella were allowed to stay inside with Joël and me so that they are not too sad about staying home. Even if they are doing great in front of the sled we need to keep in mind that they are not grown up yet and deep trails are not good for their bones and joints. But as soon as the trail is harder they can join again 😊
Winter has finally arrived 😃 The last days we had temperatures down to minus 20 degrees 🥶 and also some more snow ❄️ Actually, we had the biggest snow depth of whole Sweden yesterday 🤩
It’s still not so much but enough for short runs with the sled 🐕-🐕-🐕—🛷
When our puppies joined the first time last weekend we realized that the harnesses we had planned for them were still a bit too big… or puppies too small 😉 so, we wrote an email to Axaeco and right in time the new harnesses were in our post box yesterday. Thank you, Henry, for the super fast service. The new harnesses are looking great and it seems also Luna and Stella are proud to wear them…
We are anyway really proud of our puppies. They are definitely born to be a sled dog. You put them on the line, they stand „line out“ (means holding the line straight) waiting for the command to start and then they just go. The first video is right after the start from our yard, crossing our neighbours yard. Next pictures are from the trail, enjoying our winterwonderland.
After coming home they get a little snack and as you see the whole team including the puppies is waiting patiently until the snacks are cut 😋
And last but not least some nice pictures from Arvidsjaur and Akkanålke mountain.
A bit late but I need to post it, even if it was already some days ago…
Since the snow was still not here Raffi decided to start building the next cozy element of our free run. A tower for the dogs to look around and of course a place to sit and cuddle.
So, he took some trees to start with the basic poles and added the roof base. While working up there Barolo wanted to play and Raffi was throwing a piece of wood for him. After a few seconds Barolo was back and – of course – wanted to continue playing. When realizing that Raffi is up there and will not throw something the next minutes he invented a new game: trick your human 😅🐕🙈 not difficult for him to let the ladder fall down and watch Raffi sitting up there 🤣🤣🤣
Now we need some more construction wood to go on with the tower but eventually we postpone it to after the winter because today the snow was coming back and we hope for more to go out with the sled soon ❄️🐕🛷
Oh, that was difficult. I wanted to find a headline that sums up the content of the text but that doesn’t give Corona another place to get big. So, no name of that in the header. But my second idea was to write „stay positive“ until I realized that this word is also very much occupied by the current media reports and can have the opposite effect… so why not staying with our web page headline word „dreams“?
At the moment, of course, it’s not easy to let your dreams come true. Especially if you plan to work in tourism business the crazy situation in the whole world stops or at least slows down your plans. As long as we don’t know how everything develops we can’t go on with the building of the kennel and the guest house but nobody can force us to give up our dreams. We still believe that we can welcome you on our tours in future and we will use the time we have to make the best out of the situation.
For today that just meant to enjoy the time with our dogs at our new fire place 🔥🐕😍
This time nothing new about our dogs but the most important project beside them: our roof.
After four and a half long days of work, yesterday the crew finished everything on the roof. They did a great work and if you ever need to build or renovate your roof, especially in the area around Rostock or in the south of Sweden, you have to contact Daniel Saß https://www.sass-dachdeckermeister.de. And as you see they even take a journey far up north if you ask them 😉
We are really happy about their fantastic work. Now the rain can come… oh no, wait, time for snow now, rain can wait until spring 😉
Thanks so much Daniel and the whole team!
Yeah, winter is here and the season has started in a double sense… Aurora and sled season! What could be better?
A lot is happening now. Yesterday the work on the roof started. And they are so quick, almost all old material was taken away and one half was already protected against new rain or snow. We will add pictures of the results later on. But we promised our guests that they will see Northern Lights and indeed we got a really nice show in the evening. The pictures are still on the camera and will be added as soon as we have them on the computer.
Meanwhile we want to show you some pictures and videos from the very first sled ride of the season, including meeting eleven moose. If you zoom in one of the photos you may see one of them 😉
Always a bit sceptical about the weather forecast we were really happy to see this… today in the morning when we woke up… and it’s still snowing (and stormy as well) 🙂
The colder the temperatures get the more energy the dogs have. And if running is not enough anymore they find new ways to spend it… make order in the free run for example 😂🐕🐾
But actually it’s a quite good idea because there we will start with the sleds and some of the branches and roots of the bushes needs to be taken out because otherwise they will kill your brake pad right at the start. For those of you who have never been on a dog sled: the sled has two brakes, one metal brake and one hard plastic/gummi brake pad. The first you use when you are standing or when you need to break really hard (e.g. reindeers in front of you), the latter is to brake softly to avoid that dogs feel every bump in their back, you use it almost all the time. That is why the brake pad usually is down on the snow all the time while the metal brake only touches the snow if you step on it. The disadvantage with the brake pad now is if there is something in the way like a root that is standing out of the snow the pad can hit this and rip off or you can be stopped really hard and crash into the handle bar (the part you are holding the sled usually at the height of your ribs). Both not so funny. So, good to have strong helpers in the yard 😉
And even if there was no time to prepare the camera and it’s just a photo from the mobile phone we don’t want to hide the beautiful morning colours from today 😊
Oh, oh, time flies, like always. Almost two weeks without news for you. Sorry, for letting you wait so long. But it seems a bit like there is nothing really interesting to talk about.
Since our last post we had autumn weather every day, a lot of rain or really wet, foggy days and nights. Of course, weather can’t harm you as long as you wear the right clothes, but it led to the fact that we haven’t done so much outside and even when we were outside with the dogs we protected the phones and camera and didn’t take pictures.
Additionally we were occupied a lot with „normal“ work, earning some money, so that we couldn’t spend so much time for our own projects. But some little things anyway happened. We now have two nice self made benches in the free run to sit down and relax with the dogs – of course not in use yet in the rainy weather but hopefully when it gets dry again. Raffi also made some nice wooden food bowl holders that I painted afterwards. We are still discussing if we should screw it on the dog houses or on the cage elements. The latter has the advantage that the dog houses stay clean but I fear a bit that Stella could use it as stairs to climb out of the cage. She is already climbing half way when she is really excited. We will let you know 😉
Next week we will get guests from Germany who will help us to put a new roof on the main house. So happy when it finally doesn’t rain inside the house any longer 😉 but to prepare this we had to paint the wooden planks that will be on the edge of the roof, more than 100m length at all. Good that we have a big storage where we could do at least half at one time. Because especially when it’s relatively cold and wet outside it takes time until the painting is dry and you have to do both sides and two times to have it sufficiently covered. But now all this is prepared and end of next week the real work can start.
Maybe we will get some nice days in between to provide you with pictures and updates on the dog yard. At least it is promised to get colder and stop raining, so cross your fingers 🙂
Today not much text, just some pictures of how our days look like at the moment. We would call it “November days” even if it is September. Enjoy the beauty and silence of nature.
It felt like centuries but yesterday we could finally finish the dog cages and today our very happy dogs moved in 😃🐕🐾
But from the start: the weekend we used to put the bottom logs on their places and correct last parts were the ground was not really even. That takes more time than you think, especially when you also want to spend time with your dogs beside working. Then we started with the kennel elements in the back before we had to move the dog houses into the cages. They are way too big and with about 200kg each much too heavy to maneuver through the doors. So, better to put them on place before you close the kennel. But how do you move them over the yard? Ask Raffi, he always finds a creative solution 😉
When the dog houses were inside we could go on to put the elements around, screw them in the bottom logs and build some door locks/openers (they are delivered without). Now we need to think about a stabilization for the long side of the cage in the corner as well as cross our fingers that the dogs are not digging too much 😉✊🐾 but so far the dogs are enjoying there new homes, especially Ranger likes the view from the roof of the dog house.
So, we can focus on the smaller things in the kennel and the bigger tasks in the house.
Today was a good day, no question…
Getting up early to prepare the ground for the dog cages we received a sms that we will get a delivery at 7:30. While having breakfast we were guessing what that could be… last part of Byggmax delivery for our roof? The main part had already arrived on Wednesday after order late on Friday, so that was really fast. Dog kennel elements? Something else?
Some minutes after the suggested time a big truck arrived – and unloaded our sofa that we were waiting for quite long (and expected delivery in the afternoon). Yeah, now it gets comfortable in our living room 😊
At the same time the guys from Nito Last AB came with the digger to help preparing the kennel area. With a lot of big stones in the ground it was not possible to do it just by hand. So, it’s perfect to have the big machines right in our little village. Thanks so much 🙏
And short after lunch when Joël was trying out the new sofa for a nap another big truck came. I could see the truck but not what he was unloading so had to wait for Raffi’s info… and what we were not anymore expecting for today, it was the kennel elements 😃👏🐕
Now we can finally finish the cages at the weekend. We are really happy about that, hopefully the dogs too 😉
Yeah, yesterday the free run for the dogs was finished 😃 not really finished if you think that we want to build a shelter with a fireplace and a tower for relaxing hours with our dogs and guests. But fence and doors are done, so the dogs could enjoy a long free run with a lot of cuddles or just chewing on some wood sticks 🐕🐾😋
And hopefully next week the kennel elements will be delivered so that we can finish that part of the project too.
Today we used the nice weather to get some wood in the shelter and cut the bushes on the yard – winter isn’t far anymore 😉❄️☃️