Taiga Quest huskyt - sled dog farm and kennel

Team Kaskensavun © 2011 Tapio Seppälä

Photos are available via following links.

• Album one
• Album two

Lähettäjä Ruunaa Race 2011

Valtteri Turkka won four dog class in middle distance finnish championships, which held in the Koli Wilderness. In photo Valtteri is like the Tolkie's black rider. You can watch other photos via following link to Picasa web service.

https://picasaweb.google.com/taiga.quest/RuunaaRace2011#

Summer has come. The website and dogs have summer holiday. Musher does not have summer holiday this year. In the leisure time is plenty of jobs, for example repairing dog farm, fishing and so on. The pearch is good add on huskies summer diet.

Below a link to the puppies photo album, which has evolved a lot since last time.

http://picasaweb.google.com/taiga.quest/HuskyPuppies2542010#slideshow

This winter has started very cold. Cold is not big thing, but that means no snow. Huskies are designed that kind weather, so cold not bother them. They should get enough high quality energy. I have learned that is best that dogs have extra fat around them if winter is cold. If they are already skinny then cold weather comes, they can't get enough energy then your training long runs. Extra fat is easy to burn then spring is coming.

We have very little snow and I can't train big team in forest. There are dangerous rocks and roots in downhills and snow anchor doesn't work. So I training on the Lake Pielinen, where snow is not a problem. I have no time to train little teams and I not willing to mushing more than one time per day four hours runs.

Training on the lake has also own problems. Cold weather can make cracks on ice and water is flowing onto ice. Cold weather and water is not good for dogs paws. Also little injuries can come easily when track brokes under dog. Water under track makes it fragile. I think that my team is not yet in competition condition and little injuries makes training the team more difficult. Two weeks to the Longtrail and I am not very happy, I will need four weeks for my Team. However the Longtrail is good place to get experience to my young teammates. Half of team is two years old huskies, so they have no experience on the long runs.

I made the rabies antibody tests for my team. Everybody has antibodies some I am free to go Sweden and Norway in the future. I will started to plan trip to Pasvik in april.

Here is video clip the start of my training run from farm. Midday temperature was minus 25 degrees. There was sunny day on the Lake Pielinen and views was magnificent.

G-litter is now three weeks old. Unfortunately, the Goose is gone. For some reason, after the first week she didn't grown. The other three has grown and developed normally. They seems to have the good structure.

Three puppy have milk well enough. Pörri is in good condition and kept well her weight. The first pieces of the salmon has eaten at the same time and puppies has gotten first deworming treatment.

Below are some pictures of the puppies.

Taiga Quest G-litter, Nathan av Vargevass x Taiga Quest Bee

The puppies were born on 29th october. Pörri working like a clock, and gave birth in exactly the same night as the F-litter, 68 days after mating. There are four puppies, one male and three bitches. Unfortunately, one big male died in the birth. The rest of the puppies are vital. Pörri nursing them very carefully and keep them warm. In photos puppies are the age of half-day.

The puppies names are selected. The jury had made a good proposition and the selection of names was easy.

G-litter

• Taiga Quest Gnu, the brown male
• Taiga Quest Gazelle, a brown bitch
• Taiga Quest Goose, the white bitch
• Taiga Quest Gnat, a brown bitch