Tough Choices

After much agonizing and looking it has become apparent that there is no company that will allow us to bring 11 dogs to Norway for less than $13,000. So we have unfortunately had to limit ourselves to 6 or 7 rather than the original 11 that we had planned on taking. This has meant that some incredibly hard decisions have had to be made about who stays and who comes.

The dogs that are coming for sure are: Freya and Fenris the pups. Orion, Sub-chief, Jedi, George, and possibly Ricki. It looks like we may have found some wonderfull homes for Jarvi, Casey, Koyuk, Yoda, Jesse, and Moses. These homes are really excellent and will take wonderful care of the dogs mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. It makes it a little easier knowing that they will be in such good places.

The dogs we are bringing are just a few months away from a flight from Boston to Oslo, Norway. Then Kaia, the dogs and I will drive from Oslo to our new home in Tromso, a trip of 3-4 days. We are building a dog box for Kaia's fathers truck to transport the dogs there, and then we will take the box off the truck and send it on it's long journey back to southern Norway.

Once in Tromso, we are going to start fall training with our dogs after a few days of rest. We're hoping that starting a routine with the dogs quickly will aid in their adjustment to their new surroundings and give them some much needed outlet for any residual stress from the trip.

Updates as events Warrant.
Barry and Kaia

Micro Chipping and other stuff

We got an email from Home Again pet chipping company giving us all of the information that we would need for the dogs we microchipped to get into the Country. However, they got all the information wrong, my name was misspelled, and because of other clerical errors only eight of the dogs made it on the list of dogs that were microchipped under my information. The first of many hiccups!!!

We are waiting for emails back on that stuff.

We've had some great runs this week and the snow just keeps coming!

Mushing a Trip Prep

Kaia is out in the field with an adult OB group. They look great, I took the dogs and tracked the group down, bringing cookies. The dogs are doing great, Sub-chief ran with us yesterday, marking his first run back since getting munched by a bigger dog. Yesterdays was a short run, we found the group after 12 miles and then went another 3 before turning around. The trails were slick and grainy so the booties were getting shredded. The dogs looked great though.

We now have all the dogs that we are bringing to Norway with us Microchipped, and vaccinated to the strict standards of the Norwegian import authority. Now all we have left to do is Measure them to determine crate size for the trip over, and get a rabies titer done in June to make sure they have the appropriate level of the antibody in their systems.

Jedi was given the suspected diagnosis of testicular cancer last week. He is still running with me and the team, and has been continuing to do great. Interestingly, this solved a big dilema for me because I wanted to bring Jedi to Norway, but because of his age (10) I thought that it would make more sense to find him a pet home. Now, after his diagnosis and impending surgery, I want him with me and would not feel right about giving him to a friend knowing that he was ill. So maybe it was lucky, it earned him a spot to Norway! He'll make a lovely couch decoration in our cabin.

We are getting our tickets to Norway in a few weeks, once we know what our work schedule here in the states is for the summer.

Cheers, Barry