Shopping (The Not So Usual Stuff)

So, what does one shop, when living in the wilderness and going shopping only once in a fairly long time, you ask?

Many of our guests and visitors often wonder how do we do it that we shop only once a month. They sometimes laugh when they see 5kg packages of flour, full cases of milk, 2kg bricks of cheese, etc.

It happens from time to time, that we run out of some important stuff or need to run some errands in the local small town, like changing the tires before winter, sending or picking up post, etc. 

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Around The Globe Floods Bring Out The Best In Many

When I scroll through my FB news feed and other news channels I use these last weeks, they are full of tragedy, hardships and action around the huge floods that occur worldwide.

From little Alaskan town of Galena on the banks of the mighty Yukon river, that got nearly swept off the surface, to Czech Republic´s capital city of Prague.

The scenes, photographs and videos, but also heartbreaking articles of families losing everything, farm animals escaping from their pastures as rushing water sneaks in at night, to cats in flooded cabins, ZOO animals being evacuated, horses needed to be rescued by firemen from flooded stables, all this makes is hard to bare, hard to keep your mind away from it all, even when you sit thousands of miles away, in a dry place, with all your possessions intact, like me and my dogs.

But tragedy is not what I want to write about and I decided to write this post in honor of all those who help out during these hard times.

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Love Blooms In All Shapes And Sizes

These two cuties are Carla (the husky) and Pippi (yes, the cat).

They say cats and dogs are not friends. They say that especially huskies are cat enemies. But they also say, that love is blind, that love knows no borders and blooms in all shapes and sizes.

I chose to believe that it all depends on the environment. 

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Siberian Husky Reference Android Application

Oh, how the times change! I used to write my training log into a calendar, write down feeding program for the kennel and interesting recipes by hand into a notebook and felt very "in" after upgrading to Excell spread sheet and files in my computer. 

There were times when I felt super high tech when Jachym built a website for our dogs´ and kennel presentation.

I always thought that mobile (cell) phones are for us to be able to make a phone call on the road, or send a message. Later on I became so "technical" and modern, that I started to use it also for taking pictures and videos.

And now here we are, with yet another upgrade as the technology sprints forward. And I totally love it!

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Do Cats And Dogs Get Along?

Our animals are totally crazy. I am not sure if that´s because we are, but I rather leave that thought... :)

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My Little Helpers

Of course Granite and Pippi are very cute, as they watch me making Christmas cookies, their eyes glowing and hoping I´d give them a bit of the dough to try.

But what struck me was the many comments and shares I received on this photo on Facebook. So many people, who own huskies themselves were amazed at those two sitting so close to each other, close to food, in peace.

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Our Celebration Of Cinco De Mayo

This is not an April Fool´s joke. First of all, it´s not April. And secondly, where would we get so much snow to dump, as a joke.

Yup, this is our real, May 5th weather. And it´s snowing and blowing as I am typing. 

Few minutes ago, I watched the fox boy from the kitchen window. From his expression and body language he was not happy. His feet must´ve felt cold and wet, as he lifted them unpleasantly. He trotted along the road, then made a brisk jump at a group of birds and, disgusted he didn´t catch anything, he turned his head in different directions, thinking of his next move. He seemed hungry and his ears were wide spread and low, a sign of him hating the wet snow dumping on his head. He looked depressed for a moment, pounding the snow with his front paw, then sniffing the ground, wondering where the mice have gone. Hope he´ll find some leftovers from the dog food we threw behind the fence.

It´s not just us, it´s the animals in the woods who are also getting tired of the winter and long for the warmth of the sun rays and the green grass and fat rodents.

But I do not want to sound all depressed here. At least it´s not freezing. There´s always something to do to occupy the mind and something to celebrate.

So, although we are not Mexican, nor American, we decided that today is the perfect occasion to celebrate Cinco De Mayo. I know, funny way with all the snow, but what the heck.

Here´s how it looks at our place right now:

And this is how it will look tonight:

Or maybe not. But for sure, there will be some Cinco De Mayo Food. I mean, just look at those different kinds of delicious thingies one can make!!!

Do you have any favorite recipe you can share? I LOVE Mexican food. Hola. Ay caramba. Adios. 

I need s-u-n-s-h-i-n-e !!! I am going mad. Over and out.

Have a great weekend and Feliz Cinco De Mayo!

Home Made Dog Treats

I came across this interesting, easy to make and simple recipe for home made dog treats, and I love the idea of the beautiful gift wrapping too!

http://www.comeonilene.com/2011/05/31/homemade-dog-treats/

Photos and link posted with the permission of their author.

Do You Want MORE With Your Dog?

I took this cool, simple quiz today to find out where I stand. Try it out yourself and see what your relationship with your dog(s) looks like. 

My Dog and I…How Are We Doing?

Take this simple quiz to find out the strength and health of your relationship with your dog.

Are you and your dog REALLY best friends?

http://www.betheleaddog.com/my-dog-and-i-quiz/

Stay tuned for more posts about how to "become a lead dog", how to improve your and your dog´s relationship and bond, and other philosophies of Liz Parrish, the author of this quiz.

To read more, you can visit Liz´s website www.betheleaddog.com and her blog.

A Bit of a Big Scare

No worries - this is a happy ending story!

Couple of weeks ago, the very last day of Rebecca and Steve´s work and stay at Kipp d´Amundsen Kennels, the crew (including newly arrived help - Kristyna and Flores) went out to play with the kids. 

All went well, it was a beautiful sunny day, and the retired dogs and pups were playing with each other and with the handler crew. 

Jachym and I had a lot of stuff to sort out indoors, and we got a very disturbing surprise when they guys rushed Granite, all bloody, into the house.

He was in quite a distress, seemed to have cramps in his jaws and desperately pounded with his paws over his nose. A behavior I´ve never seen before. Apparently, the dogs were playing, Granite was somewhere behind the kennels and suddenly the guys heard screaming and dogs fighting. Music attacked Granite and Granite was snapping bag. Granite NEVER fights.  And Music won´t  attack him just all of a sudden with no reason, besides, they are used to running and playing together every single day.

We tried to calm him down, which we partially succeeded in. I took towel with warm water and washed off the blood from his front legs and his muzzle. No signs of bite marks, except for his nose, which started swelling a bit. He was breathing heavy, which was a very worrying signal. He wouldn´t close his mouth properly and sometimes grinded his jaws together. Really strange. We gave him Rymadil as he seemed in a lot of pain, and we suspected that Music must have somehow "hit" his nose so hard that the breathing became painful, otherwise we could not explain what is going on. 

But Granite would calm down, and then all of a sudden, like in an attack, start desperately rubbing his feet over his nose again. We examined his mouth numerous times to find nothing. Nothing broken, nothing swollen, except his gums being scratched and a bit bloody, which could have been from the claws as he kept rubbing his face before we prevented him from doing that further.

He wouldn´t drink and thus interested in food, he would get this strange reaction again.

Nothing made sense so we decided we need to rush him to the vet. As we were about to call them for emergency appointment, Granite coughed real hard, when Jachym tried to offer him kibble again. 

I looked on the floor and found this:

Yes, this stick is almost 10cm long and must have been stuck in his throat!!!

Granite immediately got lively, calmed down, jumped at us and gave us kisses, and went on to chow down the offered kibble! 

Phhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Can you imagine the relief???!!!

The reconstruction of the story is like this:

We have raspberry bushes in the dog yard, right behind the senior dogs´ kennels. The dogs love to munch on the berries in summer, leafs in spring and the dry branches in winter. Granite often seeks something to chew on and that is what he was doing this day as well. This raspberry stick got stuck in his throat and he was desperately trying to get it out with his paws for a while. That explains the scratched up gums. Music noticed Granite being in distress and attacked him. Some dogs do this, it is a behavior I truly dislike, but I´ve noticed some dogs have this kind of behavior. When the crew found them fighting, they of course assumed Granite was in pain from the fight. What remains a mystery is where and how well did the stick hide in Granite´s mouth, as we did not manage to notice it despite checking his mouth with a headlamp light.

As a reward for such trauma, Granite got to spend the day in the house, with his grand-nieces and nephews (aka the Love Litter) and ......

....... the night in bed. 

He was quite satisfied!

Agility and Clicker Training - aka The Adventures of Little Whiskies Continued.

The summer has passed so quickly that one day we just noticed leafs turning yellow on trees. It was a good and intense, busy summer and we got a lot of things done and checked off the always long list.

We had lots of very nice guests and visitors from different countries and our last summer´s handler Adela came again to join the team.

I will try to make a post with photos and summary of the most important happenings.

I will also post some older news about the Whiskies (aka Galena x Nitro´s puppies) and pictures, which we have hundreds of and want to share them all with you!

And speaking of the Whiskies, let´s get to my today´s post!

So we got this new dog handler. Her name is Kristyna and happends to be a young, very talented dog trainer, using combined positive training methods. We are so fortunate to have her here (the only down part is that she  could come only for a month and a half) and that she agreed to show us some training methods and working with the Whiskies a bit.

First we started off with clicker training. We got so far only to four lessons, but given the terrible rainy weather and the fact that we are already in the full swing of fall training, it´s actually not that bad. Especially when seeing such progress on the puppies!

And yesterday, while the sun was finally shining for a while, we took out the agility hurdles finally!

The puppies had a blast and during one session that took us a bit over an hour, they all learned to go through the tunnel, follow us to and from it and got introduced to the slalom. And just because "why not" we also tought them to lay down, come and other little things.

The Whiskies are in heaven, they already learned to watch for us comming with the treat bucket and they already know fun is on it´s way!

They also start shaping up real nicely and watching them react to the clicker, learning obedience and agility basics, I get a more whole picture of their little personlities. It´s actually fun, as those things I thought about each one of them, also show up and confirm while Kristina or I work with them.

I am so happy we got to finally start working with the dogs on another level, which I´ve been wanting, talking about and aiming for, for a long time!

Stay tuned for more adventures and progress of the Whiskies! And since it is exactly four months since they were born, today, Happy Birthday to you - little, special guys!

JB grabs the octopuss all time favorite toy as she passes through the tunnel. 

JB getting familiar with the slalom. 

JB sits patiently. She can do also "stay" and "down". 

 JB follows Kristyna to the tunnel

 Playful Jim carries a toy through the tunnel.

Serious and foccused Johnnie learning the "tunnel" and comming on call, using the clicker method.

Conquering the Vattudalen (and Becomming a True Northerner)

There are many things I have promissed myself to do and acomplish, from seemingly small tasks to meaningful goals and true challenges.

Swimming in the 140km long, 80m deep Vattudalen, that runs through highlands and mountain valleys, being born between the rocks of Frostviken mountains, was one of them.

Not that we never took a swim in it before, we actually go in on a number of occassions, mostly in the company of couple of our dogs, but then we are talking about the "ancle" or "knee" dive. 

In 2008 our area experienced a heatwave, when the temperatures wouldn´t drop under +25 / 30°C for about two weeks and then we dared to sink in completely for couple of minutes.

Last summer Adela and I made a few walks with the dogs down to the Flakanässet lagoon and I enviously watched the huskies taking a swim and playing cheerfully in the water. 

This year I decided it was my turn to have fun as well! 

And since yesterday we all did (Jachym, Adela and I) and we swam and swam, and I realized that I don´t actually mind the cold water at all and that I want to be back again and again, I believe that it´s been a clear sign - we have become the real, true northerners finally! :)

Just look at those happy faces:

Jachym gave me a charming smile. (Ok, I don´t know if that´s because he finally was allowed to leave the water and was bound for his can of beer, but he smiled and posed for the camera, and that counts :))

Adela also! She was very brave and stayed in with me quite long. I guess the former aquabella swimmer calls even the cold water home :)

When we came down to the lake, we saw a fisherman in his boat. After watching us for a while, he aproached us and we realized it´s one of our very few permanent neighbours Kurt. He seemed to be smiling with an expression of aproval. Perhaps in his eyes, we are now finally accepted among the Northerners too! :)

He showed us a full load of his evening catch and insisted we take couple of the beautiful fish. 

So today´s lunch will be fresh fish with butter and herbs, grilled on open fire, with potatoes and salad. 

I love my life in the North!

So, since I love challenges and living my promises, I have already set another goal. I will swim in Vattudalen every summer, no matter what the weather.

And because I consider myself a Northerner, I have to keep living up to that honorable title. So next on the agenda: Take a Swim in Stor Ringsjön lake in the foothills of Frostviken mountains. And a bath in the Hellingsåfallet waterfall channel is in order too!

Happy Trails!

Very Scary Things

Maybe some of you remember the story of the pig ear. It isn´t on the blog, but in the news archive on our website.

The story of the spooky, suspicious pig ear, that haunted Krtek during her teen age became one of our "Halloween Classics". 

Once in a while, we like to forget we live on a very tight budget and buy the dogs a bag of pig ears (thank goodness to whomever thought to pack the bags with exactly 50 pig ears! They must´ve had our kennel in mind!). 

Anyway, one day we came home from shopping and brought the furries a bag of pig ears. They all went crazy, because they all love pig ears. 

Well, all, but one. When I threw the pig ears into the pen where Krtek and Snowy lived, they jumped up in the air and backed out from those stinky, suspicious things. It was hilarious and I almost peed my pants laughing. They both carefully (and I mean really CAREFULLY) investigated around the laying pig ear, and very gently aproached it, just on their tipy-toes, ready any second to run for their lives, if that partially hairy, smelly thing decides to attack. 

As the braver (and crazier) one, Snowy took charge and showed some real courage and character. She went on to "kill" that thing first, and when she made sure it´s really dead, she decided to eat it. I really nearly peed.

Krtek decided that day that it was too much for her and wouldn´t touch the offending intruder.

It took around couple of years before she finally decided to follow her sister´s example and any time she´d get a pig ear, she´d make sure that she killed it properly before she would eat it.

Only about a year ago, I finally saw her "going for it" and eating it right away, just like the other (normal) dogs.

This story reminds me of all the crazy antics the siberian huskies have and what I actually love about them so much. They have so much dignity and are real aristocrats among the sled dogs. But they have their craziness and character, so typical for their breed. 

The story of the spooky pig ear is just one of dozens that we experience with our dogs, by sharing our lives with this big pack. 

Once, when we still lived in Czech Republic, Darky went on to bark like crazy one late evening. We kept going to the kennel and couldn´t quite figure out what seemed to be the problem. We simply found nothing suspicious. Until we finally realized, she barked at a very suspicious piece of plastic foil, that was wrapped around some stuff to protect it from rain. It´s been there for ages and we couldn´t quite figure out why would Darky decide it was an "immediate danger" right that time. But she was convinced about it´s evilness and all we could do was to remove it, otherwise she´d wake up the whole neighbourhood.

I came to think of these stories today, when our handler Adela and I were doing some chores in the kennel, while all the dogs were running lose and playing in the yard. Suddenly, they all went into a frenzy. They barked with the typical suspicious tone, hysteria breaking out and fear with frustration going from one dog to another. I thought some stranger arrived at the gate, or a some big animal apeared. They were all staring towards the garden and house, so I went to check it. It was Jachym, carrying a big wooden latter. Yup, my brave, rough-tough sled dogs got freaked out by Jachym and a latter. 

Silly dogs! Gotta love them all!

The Easter Bunny Cookie Idea

The Easter Bunny Cookie idea came with our urge to bake something typical for the Easter holidays. Something that would be simple and we had no desire to look for new recipes.

This brilliant idea is actually Jachym´s, so all credits to him. It´s always the idea, that counts.

What he did was the simpliest thing - he used the recipe for traditional christmas cookies and cut them with a bunny cookie cutter. I know, nothing to win a nobel prize, but a fast, tasty and decorative. 

I even hung a few on the birch branches that I decorate the house with every spring.

Wtih a cup of nice hot tea, eaten outside while the sun is shining, they were extra good! 

And we even made a chocolate version, by adding a few spoons of coacoa in the batter. Yummy!

Let me know if you´d like to have the recipe, I can post it if anyone´s interested.

Happy Trails...,erh...I mean Happy Easter!

Our Kennel in Dog Media

Sometime in the middle of the race season I received an interesting email. 

We were aproached by the chief editor of a new Czech canine magazine called DOGS Magazin.

They wanted to do a presentation of our kennel in their spring issue, where the Siberian Husky breed was featured. 

We felt very honored and agreed to write a bit about our dogs, our working and breeding philosophy and send a few pictures to chose from.

How nicely surprised we were, when couple months later we received not just the latest issue, but we found out a whole 2 full pages were dedicated to our kennel and dogs and all our pictures were published!

Even a code with a link to our You Tube channel was there! Wow!

I have to say I was really surprised also by the beautiful graphic design and modern features of the whole magazine. Very professionally done and good reading!

Make sure to check your news stand for the DOGS Magazin!

The Art of Sleeping

There is one thing the puppies are masters at. Well, actually there are more things that puppies master, but one thing they do really great is sleep.

While they can play hard, they can also sleep hard. They can go from the motor mouse mode right into the deep sleep.

Just like that. Click. I guess so many people would wish to master at least partially this ability.

Play hard, chow down food, explore and then pass out, right on spot. In any imaginable or less imaginable possition.

Our puppies often chose the "frog" possition, as you can see. So much for "hip displasia", I´d say! LOL

And if you think that little husky puppies need a cozy nice soft doggy bed, you´re totally wrong. They love to scatter around the kitchen or kennel floor. Or pile on top of each other.

The Whiskies are masters at sleeping on the cold kitchen floor right from the beginning.

Very often just by themselves, like the lone wolves :)

Doesn´t watching them make you sleepy at least tiny bit?! If these pictures don´t help, then I recommend you to read Dr.Brues´s (aka the Sleep Doctor) The Insomnia Blog and his great new book: The Sleep Doctor´s Diet Plan: Lose Weight through Better Sleep.
Seriously, I love Dr.Brues´s tips for good sleep, good health and even weight loss!

Nighty, night!

Introducing the Whiskies

Naming puppies is always a BIG DEAL around here.

Those of you who know our kennel know, that we follow the alphabet with majority of our litters, unless special circumstances tell us otherwise.

This is something that used to be obligatory for us, when we still lived in Czech Republic and bred our dogs under the Czech Kennel Club. A breeder had to follow the alphabet when naming litters, (logically) starting with "A".

And since we started doing this, we thought it could be good to continue, to have a certain systemm. It is also much easier to find relatives of dogs when you search pedigrees.

Yes, it is a practical thing, but to us, things should always be at least a bit of fun and challenge too.

So while finding names starting with "J" for Galena x Nitro´s puppies, we also had to find them a suitable theme. A theme, that would all start with letter "J". And of course, that would be suitable for future sled dogs (read: tough, hardy, good lookin´ too,...).

Now you see why naming puppies is a great deal here.

This time we had two more brains to engage and it took Jachym, our handlers Misa and Nardo, and myself good two weeks to tweak the theme and names.

I had already some in mind and Jachym and I joked often how much fun it would be naming a litter one day after whisky brands.

And so it turned out, that Galena x Nitro´s Kipp d´Amundsen "J" litter was perfectly suitable to become the Whiskies.

Finding names like Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam is a piece of cake. But Finding actually good sounding female whisky names took a lot of googling.

At the end, we became the experts in single malts, and blended sorts and Irish versus Scottish, we even learnd how different destilleries got established and read some quite cool stories.

So let me introduce you to our little Whiskies, in order of apereance (as usual):

Puppy 1

Puppy 2

Puppy 3

Puppy 4

Puppy 5

Puppy 6

Recognize them? Not?! Ok, here they are, in a different form:

Jamie Stuart

Jim Beam

Jack Daniels

Jameson

JB

Johnnie Walker

Hope they´ll keep us warm on the trail! :)

The Spot Factor

Here comes a blog post I´ve been meaning to publish six weeks ago. Since the information in it has not "timed out", I dare to share it now. I am ashamed. Enjoy!

If you´re expecting a serious scientific study and analysis of the siberian husky color genetics, then don´t! Although, I am not saying there is nothing to learn from this post. :)

So last night (May 8, 2011), I did some serious calculating. Naturally, I´ve been looking at Galena a lot lately, as the upcomming mom she´s had a lot of extra attention.

She is a wolf gray colored siberian, as the whole "G" litter she comes from. Her mom Jee-Haw was colored the same, and so is her dady, the patriarch of our kennel - Buck.

Nitro (as the father of Galena´s litter) is, surprise, surprise, colored exactly the same.

Natually, we´ve been having wolfgray, sable, aguti and gray puppies in mind. In fact, we expected them as one expects that 1 + 1 = 2.

But yesterday, it suddenly occured to me and I remembered that Nitro´s grandmother is black and white. Ang Galena´s too. And then I remembered some more stuff...

So last night, I did some serious calculating. Thank goodnes for picture pedigrees.

Because my instinct was telling me something. Something exciting.

This is Nitro´s mom North Wapiti´s See Spot Run:

(BTW, isn´t she pretty?! Thanks Rob for letting me use her picture!)

And this is Galena´s great-grandmother Serping:

Drum rolls, please........

Yes, ladies and gentlemen - my gut feeling was right!

Here he is, Mr.Spot aka Galena x Nitro´s son!

As a responsible siberian husky sled dog breeder, I should remind you: Colour of the coat doesn´t run. It doesn´t make a dog a better sled dog. It isn´t important.

But I have to admit, I am totally in love with piebalds!!!!

Happy Trails!