Hey There everyone,
Just wanted to let you all know that we are picking up a new dog tomorrow. For those of you who are not mushers, feel free to go and do something else as the following is pretty dogsledding-geeky.
This dog is coming to us from Ketil Reitan. Ketil is a famous musher here in Norway who has run all of the long races in the world including Iditarod, Yukon Quest, many of the shorter Alaskan races and the longest race ever, The Arctic Barents Race. Ketil has a lot of roots in Alaska (his wife Evelyn is Inuit Eskimo) and regularly imports dogs from the top kennels.
The dog we are getting from him is a female out of the imported Alaskan lines and the best lines here in Norway. She dog has run several of the long races here in Norway, in lead, and finished very respectably. One of the races I am doing this season is the Amundsen Race, which is a race she finished in lead with a rookie musher and a team of puppies behind her, and finished 13th. So we are glad to have her experience!
We had two main reasons for getting Kajo (the dog). One was that we wished to have a female that was genetically good enough, and performs well enough, to use as a breeding female for a litter down the road. Second reason was that we lost our lead dog Farmor to cancer and desperately needed another lead dog because we have 1 adult team and 2 puppy teams, and one pair of leaders can't do it all.
I will post pictures tomorrow night after the new gal arrives!
Cheers for now.
Updates as events warrent.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
New Blog Name and new news!
Welcome to our updated and newish blog!
We decided that because we are together now and we have moved to Norway. That Riverwind Kennels was not the name we should have for the kennel anymore. We have therefore changed the name of the Kennel to Ropphaugen Huskies! Ropphaugen is the name of the small farm we bought in the mountains of Eastern Norway. This farm has a rich history of dogsledding going back more than 30 years, so we wanted to keep that history going!
We have been busy this summer. We have both been busy settling in to new jobs. Our new house has been great but now we have a property to look after, wood to cut and chop for the winter, and a kennel that we are in the process of renovating.
The Kennel was laready built when we baught the house, and was built very well. It is on almost 6 feet of coarse gravel with road matting underneith so it drains extremely well, which is a big plus for the dogs this summer with all of the rain we have gotten!
We have started to build up a serious team of dogs now. We have working agreements with several of the top mushers in Norway to raise litters of puppies for them in exchange for several of the puppies from each litter. We have TWENTY THREE puppies here now, and that may seem like a bunch of craziness but we are only keeping six or seven. The rest we will train over the winter but they will return to their owners in May 2011.
We have welcomed some new dogs into our mix as well. Kajo, Jago, and Harry have all come to us from Ketil Reitan, a very well known Long Distance musher. We are very excited to have these guys with us this winter!
We will be starting to train the dogs in Fall Training mode within the next few days. We are hoping that the temperatures will stay nice and cool for us!
That is all for now. I hope everyone is having a good summer!
Cheers, Barry
We decided that because we are together now and we have moved to Norway. That Riverwind Kennels was not the name we should have for the kennel anymore. We have therefore changed the name of the Kennel to Ropphaugen Huskies! Ropphaugen is the name of the small farm we bought in the mountains of Eastern Norway. This farm has a rich history of dogsledding going back more than 30 years, so we wanted to keep that history going!
We have been busy this summer. We have both been busy settling in to new jobs. Our new house has been great but now we have a property to look after, wood to cut and chop for the winter, and a kennel that we are in the process of renovating.
The Kennel was laready built when we baught the house, and was built very well. It is on almost 6 feet of coarse gravel with road matting underneith so it drains extremely well, which is a big plus for the dogs this summer with all of the rain we have gotten!
We have started to build up a serious team of dogs now. We have working agreements with several of the top mushers in Norway to raise litters of puppies for them in exchange for several of the puppies from each litter. We have TWENTY THREE puppies here now, and that may seem like a bunch of craziness but we are only keeping six or seven. The rest we will train over the winter but they will return to their owners in May 2011.
We have welcomed some new dogs into our mix as well. Kajo, Jago, and Harry have all come to us from Ketil Reitan, a very well known Long Distance musher. We are very excited to have these guys with us this winter!
We will be starting to train the dogs in Fall Training mode within the next few days. We are hoping that the temperatures will stay nice and cool for us!
That is all for now. I hope everyone is having a good summer!
Cheers, Barry
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
New House, New dogs, New horizons!
Hello all,
Since my last post, many things have changed. Shortly after that post a friend mentioned in casual coversation that a friend of his was selling their house in Gausdal (a mountain region west of Lillehammer). The house had a kennel for sled dogs already built and was close enough for Kaia to continue working at the Kindergarten. We were interested but not looking very seriously at moving from Mesnali until after the winter. However, after seeing the place we were very interested! It was beautiful and really as perfect as we could have hoped. The only drawback was that the felt a little small. After taking time to consider the pro's and con's of buying a house and moving ourselves and our dogs before the winter was over, we decided to go for it!
It took some weeks and a lot of work but we are now moved into our house in Gausdal. Kaia still had to work, so I spent a lot of time and energy moving our whole operation from Mesnali to Gausdal. When we arrived in Mesnali in November of last year, all of our belongings fit into one small pickup. It took 4 truckloads and 5 trailers to get all of our belongings and kennel gear from Mesnali to Gausdal! It is amazing how much stuff we mushers have!
We are all settled in now. Our new place is great. It is a very old farm called "Ropphaugen", with trails for training the dogs directly from the yard and no neighbors close enough to get annoyed by the dogs barking during dinner.
Our first night in our new house was also the night of the mushers meeting for the Gausdal Marathon, a 220 km dog sled race that I was signed up for. With moving in and race prep we did not get to bed until nearly 3:00. The race was the next day.
We arrived at the race starting area at around 10:00 and set up my team and sled. I left the starting chute at 13:36. We had a tough race, and it was nearly 11 hours before I reached the half-way point. The dogs were not having fun and at that point neither was I so rather than force the issue I chose to scratch from the race. It was a very disappointing race for me, we have almost 1500 miles of traing this year, and I thought we were ready. Very discouraging.
The dogs are getting some down time now so that I can focus on putting the finishing touches on the kennel, and finish unpacking the house. Next week we are bringing in two very good dogs from the team that was 3rd in the Finnmarksløpet and has won the Gausdal Maraton several times. These are very good dogs and are the beginning of our new kennel. We have many old dogs who are approaching retirement and life on someones couch, so bringing in some really proven quality dogs is a step in the right direction! Thank you Trond Ørslien!
Hope everyone has had a good holiday season!
Cheers, Barry
Since my last post, many things have changed. Shortly after that post a friend mentioned in casual coversation that a friend of his was selling their house in Gausdal (a mountain region west of Lillehammer). The house had a kennel for sled dogs already built and was close enough for Kaia to continue working at the Kindergarten. We were interested but not looking very seriously at moving from Mesnali until after the winter. However, after seeing the place we were very interested! It was beautiful and really as perfect as we could have hoped. The only drawback was that the felt a little small. After taking time to consider the pro's and con's of buying a house and moving ourselves and our dogs before the winter was over, we decided to go for it!
It took some weeks and a lot of work but we are now moved into our house in Gausdal. Kaia still had to work, so I spent a lot of time and energy moving our whole operation from Mesnali to Gausdal. When we arrived in Mesnali in November of last year, all of our belongings fit into one small pickup. It took 4 truckloads and 5 trailers to get all of our belongings and kennel gear from Mesnali to Gausdal! It is amazing how much stuff we mushers have!
We are all settled in now. Our new place is great. It is a very old farm called "Ropphaugen", with trails for training the dogs directly from the yard and no neighbors close enough to get annoyed by the dogs barking during dinner.
Our first night in our new house was also the night of the mushers meeting for the Gausdal Marathon, a 220 km dog sled race that I was signed up for. With moving in and race prep we did not get to bed until nearly 3:00. The race was the next day.
We arrived at the race starting area at around 10:00 and set up my team and sled. I left the starting chute at 13:36. We had a tough race, and it was nearly 11 hours before I reached the half-way point. The dogs were not having fun and at that point neither was I so rather than force the issue I chose to scratch from the race. It was a very disappointing race for me, we have almost 1500 miles of traing this year, and I thought we were ready. Very discouraging.
The dogs are getting some down time now so that I can focus on putting the finishing touches on the kennel, and finish unpacking the house. Next week we are bringing in two very good dogs from the team that was 3rd in the Finnmarksløpet and has won the Gausdal Maraton several times. These are very good dogs and are the beginning of our new kennel. We have many old dogs who are approaching retirement and life on someones couch, so bringing in some really proven quality dogs is a step in the right direction! Thank you Trond Ørslien!
Hope everyone has had a good holiday season!
Cheers, Barry
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