Quiet at home...

We have had a wonderful white Christmas with my parents visiting us for two days.  During those two days, as much as 60 cm of fluffy powder snow fell!  We literally had to dig our way out :-)  Luke and Phoebe are in the mountains with someone we know - they are getting a lot of exercise pulling the sled, but it feels sooooo quiet here without them! Oh well....they will be back here soon enough :-)

Running....

(Picture of Hans-Christian Ørjestad's dogs)

Today I loaded Luke and Phoebe into the car and set off down the local road to the parking place close to Oslomarka Trekkhundklubb (Oslo Forest Dog Sledding Club).  We went with the bike - quite OK surface to run on, and not slippery! Puh!  Total distance 10 km, speed between 15 and 25 km/hr.  We stopped for a bit at the Club house, and I let Luke and Phoebe run freely inside one of the larger kennels. Nice day out; sunshine, minus 10 degrees C.  Back home I finished building the second small dog run, setting up the fences and shovelling gravel... Now I only need to build a couple of houses and I can welcome guests! :-)

False alarm?

Back to normal....no howling, no apparent heat...

Oooouuw, oooouw!

Luke spent the day outside alone....howling..... Our neighbour heard him howling on and off, but he stopped when she went outside and said, "NO"!  This evening, he has not shown much interest in the romantic way towards Phoebe..... Maybe he realised it was too early and he is just biding his time...!?  His howling may also just be because he is unused to being alone!?  They will now spend the time chained to their respective house, so we should not have howling at least....

Interesting developments...

Yesterday I went out for a bikeride again - I was so impressed by their team performance on Monday that I wanted to test two days in a row... Again the kids performed very well - Phoebe is extremely "forward" and Luke can pull you up a hill... His only problem is that sometime he decides to "mark the spot" and that stops everything for a few seconds - oh well, that is no real problem! Getting to the end of the road, we met a guy walking two loose dogs - they "suddenly" appeared out of nowhere in the dark, and startled Phoebe.... Bof, bof.... She stopped, backed away, but Luke good boy got us past - Phoebe is actually afraid of the dark! We got back on track, and only turned around after we hit an icy patch and.....well.....two dogs - two wheels... You figure it out! We went slow, so no problems apart from the chain coming off the cogs. "Quickly get back on your horse", as they say... Back towards home went we, with a minor detour to add on a couple of kilometers. Total maybe 7km (forgot the GPS)?
As we came back to the house and I was getting my shoes off, Luke suddenly decides to mount Phoebe....! WHAT!? Get down! Most of the evening he tried, tried....but Phoebe rejected him...
She only had her last heat 3 months ago, but it is not impossible that she could have been triggered by his arrival to have another! After all, he is The MAN! :-) At night we chained them each to their house to avoid....complications, hoping there was no hanky panky in the night! Today, we left Phoebe inside our house and Luke in the kennel.... We shall see how the situation develops...! Mjau, Voff Voff!

Doggy routines..

The dogs after a quick run.

Wake up in the morning - meaty soup... Go for a walk, pee, s**t, back in the kennel and bye bye... When I came home today I took the dogs for a spin in front of the bike. There has come a sprinkle of snow, so the local road is less slippery. Short distance - around 5 kms at a good pace. Phoebe RUNS and Luke PULLS when he doesn't stop to mark his spot...

Luke is getting more and more relaxed with us - he is a really sweet dude - calm and happy :-)

He seems to adapt really well also to Nexus - they even layed down on the floor together - Luke cleaning Nexus' fur and Nexus licking Luke on the nose just like he does with Phoebe!

Luke has spent his long life as a kennel dog - he has, shall we say, acquired a.....an odour?! On Saturday we took him into the shower and washed him - NO PROBLEMS! He was calm and accepting, even seemed to enjoy it! Gooood boy, Luke :-) We love him!

Doubling the number of dogs...!

Oh dear....here we go... We were warned about the Siberian husky sickness.... After finally moving into a house, we have had a chance to build a mini-kennel.... So now we had space for more than one dog...!

Our good friend, Johanne let us inherit her trusted wheel dog Luke. He is now close to nine years young and has raced in many long-distance races such as Finnmarksløpet - lots of experience to match Phoebe's youthful enthusiasm!

They are alreday best of friends except that Phoebe tries to steal all the food...heehe! Oh - and they didn't even need the new house I had built - they moved into Phoebe's "two beedroom house"!

The one thing that Johanne has warned us about with Luke, is his previous history of eating a pet rabbit! Our chubby boy cat Nexus may be at risk, since he is used to running around with Phoebe in safety, whilst Luke might decide to hunt him for real! Well, so far everything is fine! Luke takes direction well - he breaks away when we correct him, and it seems more and more that he ignores Nexus :-) Although Phoebe and Luke sleep outside and spend the day in the kennel, they are inside the house with us in the evening in order to integrate with us :-)

At least now we have two dogs to pull bikes or our sled.... A little slow perhaps, so perhaps we need a couple more....!?