This week Johanne was away working in Africa and I went to her cabin with Kjetil whom helps train her dogs. With Phoebe we had 10 dogs... I drove us there with 4 dogs in cages in the car and the remaining 6 in the dog-trailer. On the way we picked up her car from the repair-shop and one of her sleds from the "Dog musher shop" in Elverum. We had true "arctic winter" conditions with nighttime temperatures down to -25 degrees C.... Quite some debut for Phoebe's first nights to sleep outside in a dog house!!! She didn't seem worse for wear - bright and active at the morning feeding / watering time. We gave all the dogs extra food over the weekend for them to generate enough heat - "fuelling the oven" so to speak, something we had to do for us too.... When arriving at the cabin, all the plastic water storage bottles were frozen solid!!! We lit a fire in the fireplace and started melting snow on the electric stove.... Falling asleep in my sleeping bag on the sofa I was in the end warm and cozy.... :-)
At 5 in the morning, I had the pleasure (truly!) of being woken by the dog pack howling! I believe I heard an "out-of-tune" voice that perhaps was Phoebe - anyway, it is a wonderful thing to hear - I just love the dog concerts :-)
On Saturday we went out for a looooooong run - Phoebe teaming up with 4 of Johanne's experienced dogs on a run that was 34.2kms according to the GPS!! No wonder she had a great appetite when we came home, and that she went to sleep like an angel in her house....! Sunday was a shorter run of 19kms before we packed up and drove home to Oslo in the queue of cars to deliver them all back at Johanne's kennel.... It was nice to sleep in our own beds for a change - Phoebe outside our bedroom door and myself next to Priscila in our comfy bed :-)See a video of the Saturday run here: http://andersf.multiply.com/video/item/78/Phoebe_running_long_distance
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