Season's over

Well then. It’s been a really busy winter. The last race is over and the dogs are having well earned time off… At least for a couple of days, until they’ll become too restless, and we have to take them for a run again.

Although really busy, we’ve had a pretty nice winter this year. The dogs have done really well in training, me and Suvi have both succeeded well in getting the best out of the bunch, and most dogs have been in a better shape than ever.

Weather-wise this winter’s been nice also. The snow came early December, and even though Xmas time was really rainy, we only missed out a couple of trainings – can’t run the dogs on icy roads. Since then there’s been more snow and cold gray winter days. We didn’t see the sun from snow clouds for about two months, but you can’t complain. It wasn’t so long ago we had horrible winters with snow coming as late as end of January. Only one thing one could wish for training here in Southern Finland: more hills. Our dogs are strong and have a pretty good endurance, but I wish I had a place where I could train more climbing. 

Another thing we’ve done well this season is feeding the dogs. So far we’ve had difficulties finding a decent food for the dogs. We’ve tested quite a few of the brands available in Finland on past seasons, and we’ve had similar problems with all of them: tired, injured dogs and bloody stool on hard training. This year we’ve tested a new food made by Greenheart from Holland. We’ve fed Sportline for basic feeding and Sportline Extreme for snacks. And they’ve worked like a dream. The dogs have no injuries, their coats are shiny, paws in great condition, their poops are small and you don’t have to feed them loads and loads to keep them in shape.

Jongunverran 110km race January 26th 2013

The first race of winter season was held in Lieksa, the Jongunverran ajot sleddogmarathon. It’s a one day, two part event, 39km + 69km race with 7 dogs. I was the musher at the occation: the biggest participant with smallest dogs present. The team were: Mimmi & Beck in lead, Kajsa in swing, Pimu & Putte in team and young Keke & Hottis in wheel.

It was the first real race for the two wheel-boys and it ended up being a bit too much for them. I had been driving the dogs for 80km trainings at home, and Keke and Hottis did well running easily with the older dogs. Unfortunately the stress of a new race situation and hard trail was too much for the boys and they ended up not giving their best. The other five furry ones worked that much harder and did an amazing, but hard job, bringing me back to finish line. After exhausting run on dog-belly-deep snow, our team finished 10th out of 20 teams, being two hours slower than the winning team.

Jongunverran race results can be read at Racinghusky.com.

Ruuhirod 2nd – 3rd February 2013

The second race of the season was Ruuhirod at Seljes. It’s a 4 x 20km race, where you’re given the first start time and the other three laps you can drive whenever you wish during a 20 hour period. We had three teams participating: me, Kati in MD6 class with yearlings, driving Wilma & Koff in lead, Egil & Esko in team and Enzo & Euro on wheel. Suvi in MD4 class with Beck & Iiris in lead and Putte & Benny in wheel. And our third team was driven by Antti Mäkiaho also in MD4 class. He had Mimmi & Bambi in lead and Kajsa & Pimu in wheel.

The race was held only a week after Jongunverran and a week was a too little time for the dogs to recover from that hard race. The 6 dogs class start was before 4 dogs, and I left for trail, not so much to race, but to train the youngsters about racing. It was after all the first race start for E-boys. The trail was in a really good condition, but I was going really slow, so slow in fact that both of our 4 dog teams passed me, and though they were going pretty good pace, they obviously weren’t at their best. I discussed with Suvi and we decided to end the race after that one lap.

Unfinished race, but on the positive side, all the young dogs got a nice training of races. We gave them food and drink at the race, to have them eat in a new situation and all in all the E-boys behaved well. Then we headed to our granddad’s house where we spend rest of the weekend.

Antti stayed at the race, he participated on Ruuhisprint with his own dogs being second in 4 dogs class and obviously the fastest Siberian team.

Ohkolan talviajot sprint, Finnish Championship race, February 15th – 16th 2013

I was planning to participate on Eastpoit Open, long distance SOC 272km race in February. As it turned out, I wasn’t able to form an even team of dogs to race with, so I had to cancel my participation. Erkki Bürkland from kennel Lumikiisan had contacted Suvi, telling her that if we ever needed a musher for sprint race, he’d volunteer for the job. Erkki had already driven our team a couple of times on dryland races last autumn.

Well, Eastpoint Open was meant to be the last proper race for the dogs, and as I was not going, I didn’t need to train them for long distance anymore. Instead Suvi talked me into driving our Bees as a 4 dog team with sprint racing in mind. She promised Erkki that he could drive our team at Ohkola. I was able to train the dogs fast only for a couple of times before the race, so we didn’t have high hopes. But the team surprised us: Erkki finished 6th out of 24 teams, being the 2nd fastest Siberian team.

Knowing that the Bees had just been running 50-80km trainings before Ohkola, I have to say the dogs did really really well. On the first day Benny & Beck were in lead and Pimu & Putte in wheel. On the second day Pimu and Benny switched places.

A big thank you goes also to our brave and hard working musher Erkki!

Results for the race can be found on L-SVU website.

"Sprint dogs" and a great musher Erkki

Sprint & MD SOC at Rautavaara 8th -10th March 2013

After Ohkola race, Erkki was meant to drive our Bee-team at SOC sprint held in early March. I thought I could still improve their running and make them go a faster, so I continued the short runs with Bees. Except. Well, it turned out there won’t be many participants on the sprint of 4 dogs class. Since we didn’t have two Siberians to include the team (and racing against sprint Alaskan/hounds with Siberian-Alaskan long distance team, well…), we weren’t able to participate on sprint in 6 dogs class. We nearly didn’t travel to Rautavaara at all, but as little sisters do, Suvi talked me into it again. She said she could drive the dogs in MD6 class. After all, we had booked a room already, and the dogs were in pretty nice shape. Obviously the team weren’t as evenly trained after Bees sprint running, but Suvi wanted to enjoy the last race as a fun run.  

So we participated on SOC MD6, 3 x 50km race, with Mimmi & Bambi in lead, Kajsa & Pimu in team and Beck & Putte in wheel. The three Bees in the team had obviously lost some of their endurance, as I tried to make them sprint dogs. Especially Beck had hard time, being such a big muscular boy, he’d already developed quite nice “sprint-muscles”, and he didn’t perform as well as he normally does. The three Alaskans had no problems running because they’d continued running longer trainings. All three Bees did their best.

And you have to be really, really proud of them: our team finished first out of three competitors. Our team even passed a 12-dog team on the second day. And on third day the dogs were planning to add another 20km to the trail. Suvi had to tell them very firmly that finish is in another direction.

No race goes without complications. Everything else went just fine, except we’d travelled all the way to Kuopio before Suvi, while reading about the race on the internet, learnt that we could’ve had a pool of 8 dogs to race with. Well, we taken only the 6 dogs with us, and there’s no turning back home from Kuopio to pick up a couple of extras to the race.

Results for the SOC race can be found at vul.fi.

Start on Saturday, a happy team on a go

So now then. The dogs and mushers are having some time off from training, although we’ll be driving the dogs occasionally whenever is needed. The weather’s been lovely so driving in sunshine with dogs that seem like they could go on forever is a lot of fun. It’s also a great time to teach new dogs to lead a team. Kajsa’s surprised us as a leader. She normally runs in swing, and has only been tried in lead for once. Well, she’s ran with ears open, because we tried her in lead for the second time and she did really so good. She turned right and left when asked and even took the team to the right side of a road. She keeps speed really well, and I’m sure she’ll turn out a great leader for next season. Amazing girl our little Kajsa.

Future leading star, little Kajsa

…And obviously we’re already planning our strategy for next season.

Our pack has changed some. Zigi was the first to leave. She’d returned our pack on autumn, to show the E-boys how to run. Unfortunately she’s getting old and wasn’t able to keep up with the energetic youngsters. She returned to her home kennel Amysah in December.

Muru and Hottis were second to leave. They moved to kennel Amysah, where their father Kaiser, sister Kaisu and aunt Zigi lives. Then after SOC, two boys, Keke and Egil moved to a new home.

The pups from last summer are growing up fast. The D litter are now 10 months of age and looking very nice and being very irritating. The F-girls are lively 7 months old pains in the ass. Can’t wait for autumn, so I can harness them.

The yearlings are proving to be excellent dogs by the way. Especially Esko and Enzo are working hard and effortlessly. They also look very nice. Euro’s pretty much the same, but he’s structurally not as good as his brothers. Can’t wait for next season, and to be able to train the E-boys properly, this season they’ve ran 4 times a week about 24 - 30km runs. They seem so much like the Bees mentally, but with better physical capability they’re close turning into super dogs.

We took some new photos of the young dogs, and played with the them a little today. One of their favourite games is when you throw food for them to find. Here's a couple of pics of girls on action:

This is a great social exercise for young dogs. At my place, our Siberians live in two big 100 m² kennels, girls in one and boys in another. Fighting is banned, and all dogs get along really well. They can eat from a same bowl and enjoy chewing their bones very closely together, even unsupervised.

Another thing that's not allowed is for boys to go crazy over girls in heat. We've never had fights, and as I like sleeping in night time (if I'm not training that is), there's no howling allowed either. All dogs run together as one team with no problems, because boys know girls are a no-no when in heat. For example, Beck's ran most of this season in lead surrounded by girls in heat at different times. He's always focusing on running. Also eating is important, and boys never loose their appetite over girls.

Beck awaiting for his dinner.

Planning for breeding, this kind of social behaviour is always favoured, because Siberians are at their best a very sociable breed. I can't imagine how I could train the dogs, if they wouldn't eat or sleep but fight whenever girls were in heat. 

- Kati