My Mission

My friends and those of you, following my blog, know that I have always been in favor of natural-holistic approach to my dogs´ health and nutrition. The very same applies for Jachym and I in our daily life.

In those 20+ years of living with, raising, training and racing sled dogs I have learned that herbal and other natural remedies and ingredients do truly make a big difference on my dogs. 

Be it a detox weekly cure (I will write about that in some other post sometime), natural antioxidant supplementation for stronger immune system and healthier joints, coat, skin and eyes, or massage and healing liniments, oils and salves for treating the four legged athletes´ injuries, such as all sorts of wounds, sore wrists and muscles.

I have turned to herbs and other natural sources and therapies when treating the dogs´s many less or more serious conditions, such as deworming, tick treatment, mosquito and fly bites, liver and kidney problems, eye diseases, limping, bite wounds (including those very deep ones), swollen and sore wrists and joints, arthritis, diarrhea, exema, allergies, weight loss, anxiety and stress, bladder and urinary tract infections and even cancer.

Now, please know that I am in no way saying that all diseases and health problems can be cured only by using herbs and natural remedies, or that one should not seek a vet or physician when health is in question!

After all these years that I´ve been searching for ways how to improve my dogs´s and my personal health and quality of life, I learned a lot. Along the way I found some great and effective natural remedies, therapies and approaches, met many wonderful and interesting people, started the self-learning process, improved my relationship with my dogs tremendously, managed to enjoy their presence until the average age of 15,5 years, learned about the amazing effects of physical and mental stimulation on the improvement of a dog´s happiness, successfully fought depression, and overweight and it all opened my eyes and broadened my horizons. 

It is an ongoing learning curve and journey, for which I always will be very grateful, and I would like to share it with you.

My mission is to keep improving the quality of life of animals and creating better relationship between people and animals (and particularly between mushers and their sled dogs).

I believe that if any of my experiences, tips, ideas, recommendations and suggestions will help someone of you and your dogs (and other animals), my mission has been successful. :)

In order to be able to do this, I have decided to re-model my blog and add easy to navigate sections  (pages and labels) that will help you to find information you are looking for. Please bare with me, it is a lot of work and time and the changes are happening "on the go".

You will also notice that I have added some recommendations and links to various books that I read (that inspire, motivate or educate), products that I use (because they work for me and my dogs) and businesses that I work with and/or recommend, because:

- I agree with their philosophy

- they are ethical

- they do not abuse or test on animals

- they have a friendly service

- their services/products work and are not a money waster

For years I have been recommending only what I tested myself with my dogs, and what I can trust. It is my philosophy and ethics, and I have successfully built my previous business on it. We ran the very first holistic internet shop for animals and their owners in Czech Republic, as well as imported and distributed many natural pet foods, nutritional supplements and health care products, for 13 years.

If you consider purchasing any of the products I recommend, please do so through the links from this site/blog, it will help to cover the efforts and time I put into providing all the information, knowledge, and running this site and supporting my living. Thank you.

I have a few exciting projects prepared, the first one of which is a FREE online natural nutrition and health advisory service and will be launched shortly.
Based on many requests and inquiries, I will also re-introduce the various Kipp d´Amundsen Feeding Programs I have developed for my dogs throughout the years, and will include composing of recommended Individual Feeding Programs to my services.

Please feel free to leave any response, suggestions, requests, ideas and inquiries of what you would like to read about, either in comments below this post or write me a message on Facebook.

If you like my blog and whatever information you find here is useful to you, would you consider supporting my work by clicking and visiting some of the advertisements, and/or donate any amount  through the PayPal link on the left sidebar? Thank you!

Besides nutritional and health care advise, I will continue adding videos, tips and ideas of sled dog care, massage and stretching, training, equipment and other useful information not only for sled dogs, as well as keep sharing stories and experiences from my daily life and adventures on the trail with my beloved huskies, as we chase our dreams!

Happy Trails and Stay Safe!

Mud and Ice Everywhere...

Unless you´re a musher from Alaska or basically anywhere in the USA or Canada (those guys just stole our cold weather! :)), you know painfully well what this post title means.

But I am not going to complain here about not enough mileage on the dogs, warm and very humid weather, muddy training runs or the cursed recent ice that forced us to retreat by the fireplace.

Ok, I will complain a little, but it will not bring us snow nor below zero temps, and most certainly will not put a smile on my face. I know that fellow mushers throughout Scandinavia suffer the same. 

Anyway, I thought to keep you all up to date on the latest happenings here at Kipp d´Amundsen Kennels.

Sandra as a happy camper with the puppy team

The major downer is the leaving of Sandra, our very reliable and overall great handler. Sandra´s mom underwent an extremely complicated and painful surgery and Sandra is back home, helping take care of her. We all hope for her return whenever it´s possible and wish her mom a speedy recovery!

On the positive note we were fortunate enough to find temporary help rather quickly. Martyna Szczykutowicz is an experienced dog handler, husky lover and a passionate rescue and re-homing volunteer from Poland. And thank to that, all the special needs dogs at the kennel are being exercised on a daily basis and chores are done much quicker.

While the weather is testing us like this the past few days, we have decided it was a perfect opportunity to work in detail on plans for this year´s racing season, the 2012 sponsoring program and -- our new website.

First of all, let me introduce new sponsor and partner of Kipp d´Amundsen Team - Blomyard.Se Kreativ Reklam. 

This Strömsund based small business has a huge and flexible offer of advertising services, they print posters, prints, cards, stickers, business cards, brochures, design websites, etc. They will be giving a "face" to our dog truck and a proper presentation of our main sponsors on it :) Thank you so much Ylwa and team!

While we have updated the SPONSOR A DOG program, made actualization of the popular ADVERTISING and other sponsoring and support possibilities, we would also like to proudly announce, that we have teamed up with THE ANIMAL RESCUE SITE (partners of The Petfinder.Com) and HUSKY ADOPCJE (read this blog post) and while fundraising for our upcoming season, we´ll be as well fundraising and donating to these two great organisations to help animals in need.

We are very excited about these partnerships.

If you would like to see how you can help both - The Kipp d´Amundsen Team and dogs and cats in shelters, needing surgeries and medical treatments, while forever homes for them are being sought, please take a look here.

All this brings me to the final and one of the most exciting news - our new official website has been finally launched! A project we´ve been working on for the past year and never seemed to be able to finish it. A huge and grateful thank you to Martyna for the great and patient help (not only making great banners and other graphic work, but also for the care taking of the dogs while we slept after our 4:00 bed times the past three days)!!!

Jachym is still tweaking some details, but with no further due, here it is, the loved and hated final product, which I hope will serve you well in providing information about our dogs, kennel and happenings:

www.kippdamundsen.com

Please, also note not only the new website address, but also new email address, which you will find in the "contact" section. 

Please be patient with us as we still have to develop couple of pages and some of the dogs´s presentations, which is fairly difficult with the heavy training underway.

Hoping to go out for a few longer runs in the upcoming days (the weather forecast promises some rain showers - aaaah, so "motivating"!) 

Anyway, hope everyone´s safe and sound and here´s to all my fellow co-sufferers - Let´s all think SNOW!

Happy Trails!www.blomyard.se

How to Subscribe to This Blog

In this post, I would like to show you, how to simply subscribe to this blog's Atom (RSS) newsfeed. With this service, you can have new articles delivered directly to your computer, or mobile.

The easiest way to subscribe is through your browser (Firefox, or Internet Explorer v.7 and higher) - just click on Posts button on the right sidebar, as shown on the picture and than on Atom, the last option in little drop-down window. After doing so, your browser will offer you "Subscribe to the feed" option.

The other way to subscribe to posts is using specialized RSS reader, or email client with RSS support, like Mozilla Thunderbird for example. To do that, you need to get the Atom feed's address, which can be copied by clicking right mouse button on Atom in the little drop-down window under Posts and selecting "Copy shortcut/Copy Link Location" from context menu. After that, paste copied address to RSS program - in Thunderbird: File->New->Account->RSS & News Blogs.

After adding feed to your browser/reader, you can also specify periods in which the program should check for new posts. Usually the best is 1 hour.

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