SH teams in LD-races of 2012:

FEMUNDLÖPET- 2 Febr.
Femund 600
19. Marius Moholdt
24. Karsten Grønås
27. Agneta Nilson Hörnlund
30. Trond Hansen
37. Christer Afséer (AM)
44. Catherine Mathis F.
45. Erik Martinez
52. Sigmund Alhaug
Pascal Rebord
Hendrik Stachnau (AM/GR)

Record entry of purebred teams for the F600!

Femund 400
19. Leif Herleiksplass
20. Steinar Bergheim
38. Tore Hunskår
42. Kenneth Monsen
51. Kim Thomassen(Am/Gr)
55. Kim Dulk
59. Kenneth Dåbakk
65. Kari Hope
76. Terje Frode Bakke
Guy Trannois
Marte Stensland Jørgensen
Petter Osøren Hansen
Isabelle Travadon
Sandrine Muffat Meridol

FINNMARKLÖPET - 10 March
FL1000:
Marius Moholdt
Sigmund Alhaug
Leif Herleiksplass

FL500
Kari Eldby
Johanne Sundby
Yvonne Rinne

AMUNDSEN RACE- 24 March

AR400
Volkert Ebertshauser

Duo



Our 2011 team sponsored by:

Jana Henychová huskies.cz

Special thanks to:
- Leif Herleiksplass
- Ragne Kristine Smuk
- Frode Bakke
- Nordic Husky Farm


Our 2010 team sponsored by:




tel. 0047-91829232

14 November
The mainstring team rounded 1000 km. of training at the beginning of November after an unusual warm period for this time of year. It has been freezing for some days, but as of today, the temperatures are gone up again. Strange autumn it is!

The second drawing of Femundlöpet has been performed by now. So far, there are 7 Siberian Husky teams and 1 Alaskan Malamute team entered for the F600 and 8 SH teams and 1 Alaskan Malamute/Greenlanddog team for the F400.

Training goes its usual way, though the dogs' feet would like to get snow now.
Karsten is also back on track after a 2-weeks break due to back trouble. Not so surprisingly when lifting a 25 liter water-carrier back and forth on the ATV day in-day out. As it has been so warm the dogs needed the extra drinks, but the musher had to suffer for it. Training was not put on hold though and I finally got around to take out the mainstring all at once, instead of dividing them in two teams. The mainstring has 16 dogs on the team and the yearling team has 6, so there are some dogs to train.
Next month, the puppies from last summer will get harness broken before some of them leave for England in January.

Internet connection is troubling at the moment so it is difficult to get photo-files online. We hope to get fiber-connection soon.

1 October. Final show for the season.
Our show season was only 2 months this year, with our first show in the beginning of August and the last one the first weekend of October. We entered four shows totally, with the first and last being the most succesfuls.
Frekkis got a Swedish CAC at the first show and a Norwegian one at the last show. He has now 1 Norwegian certificate to go for his championship title.
Isa got a litter in April and was only shown for the second time this year. She got Excellent both times and on the show in Trondheim last weekend received her final CAC. She may call herself Norwegian and Swedish Champion.


We didn't get a very good photo from the show as Isa is not very fond of the other breeds. She became 2nd after the Malamute and before the Samoyed and Greenlanddog in the BIS final.
Best of breed judge: Arne Foss (allrounder), Best in Show judge: Annica Uppström.

13 September
With autumn training well underway, our race plans for the winter are also getting shape. Although we had sworen that Karsten would retire from Femundlöpet in 2011, an unusual birthday present from friends Carola and Bernhard Schuchert made him come back on it. So, here we go again... training for all its worth and spending loads of money on a midweek of sleep-deprivation. This time, I have promised to be joining as a handler in an effort to put an end to Femundlöpet for our part once and for all, so we can focus on some other races.
I very much welcome the new stage race 'Norway Trail' as being a more suitable race for some; one can get normal night sleep between the stages and handler help is allowed with booting the dogs etc.. Sounds just a bit more human :-)
But we'll see what the season leads to, Femundlöpet is the one goal and Amundsen Race the other, with Norway Trail a good third, if finances allow. It is the meaning to have both an 12-dog team in the AR400 and an 8-dog team in the Amundsen Duo class.
This year we will experiment by having 4 youngsters of eighteen months old and 2 of twenty-two months old in the 200 km. Amundsen Duo race at the end of March. Nathan offspring Babe, Iden, Boss and Taxi as well as Dante offspring Thor and Vienna are all looking very promising and should be able to tackle a middle distance race like Amundsen Duo. Unfortunately, they are too young for Polar Distans otherwise this race would have been an option too.

The former rookies of last year; Flapper, Kviten, Bo and Molly have now moved on to the mainstring and are doing a great job there. By now they are on runs of 16 to 17 km.

Even though Femundlöpet is not having World Championship status in 2012, the F600 has surprisingly attracted an even greater number of purebred teams than last season. As of now, 7 Siberian Husky teams, 1 Alaskan Malamute team and 1 Alaskan Malamute/ Greenlanddog are entered. That gives hope for the future!

Also the Finnmarkslöpet 1000 is seeing a relative big entry of Siberian Husky teams for 2012 with the teams of Marius Moholdt, Sigmund Alhaug and Leif Herleiksplass entered. We have to go back as far as 2001 when there were 3 purebred teams starting in the FL1000 (Frode Bakke, Isabelle Travadon and Karsten).
In recent years, it was none or only 1 Siberian team participating; Karsten in 2006 (13.), Swiss Pierre Antoine Heritier in 2007(27.), Jana Henychova from Czech Republic in 2009 (31.) and Isabelle Travadon from France in 2010.(27.) It is good to see the Siberian Husky back in Europe's longest sled dog race and this time with all teams from homecountry Norway! So far 2 SH team are entered for the FL500, but most likely more will be signing up. We wish all the teams a great and foremost injury free season!

Otherwise, not so much news to report from here.
An interesting debate on the Facebook site of the Swedish Siberian Husky Club about show versus work, made us decide to join Facebook in order to keep ourselves informed and up to date. Still, we will keep our website as our main journal, but for the Facebookers; we are to be found under http://www.facebook.com/vargevass

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23 August

Things are turning back to normal after an intensive seminar weekend which was much fun to organize. We hope the amount of information became no overload, but we got only positive feedback. People were remarkable awake, even when the presentations were not finished before 22:30 hours Saturday night and one needed to be up and going at 07.00 am next morning to see the start of the Raftälvenrod race and the two teams coming into the checkpoint. Guestspeaker Bernhard Schuchert demonstrated checkpoint-routines as well as massage and stretching techniques. All of which gave an insight of what is happening on a long distance race. An impression of the weekend can be seen in the photo-album here . Photos by Frode Bakke and Rune Moen.
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LONG DISTANCE RACING SEMINAR, Norwegian/Swedish version
In the weekend of 20/21 August we held a long distance seminar as requested.

The program had both a theoretical part and a practical part. Karsten gave an in-depth view on:
Dogs: what dogs are needed to make a competitive long distance SH team.
Musher: what does it take to be a long distance musher with Siberians.
Training: how to build up training for a long distance race.
Feeding: how and what to feed during training-season and on races.
Injuries: how to avoid and how to treat common injuries
Race: how to prepare and what to think of during the race
Equipment: what is needed.
Costs: what does a season of long distance racing actually cost.

In the practical part, checkpoint-routines were simulated by making our yard into
'Checkpoint Östviken'.

As guestspeaker we had invited Bernhard Schuchert.
Bernhard has been the first to finish the Finnmarkslöpet 1000 with an all Siberian Husky team in 1998 and 2000.
In 2004, he finished the Iditarod with two Siberian Huskies on the team.
Having run FL1000 more than 10 years, Bernhard talked about Finnmarkslöpet and the difference between Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Huskies.


Photo by Helmut Dietz

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2 July
Midsommer day (this year 24th of June) was rainy as usual. Hopefully a sign that July will not become too warm so it will be possible to train the dogs at least few times in our warmest summer month.
Our puppies have wandered out to their new homes except for the ones we keep ourselves as well as the ones going to the United Kingdom and Ulva's daughter Sissili who is going to Finland by the middle of July. We wish all the owners all the best with their new family members and hope to see them in the future.
Also this year many had to be dissapointed as we had no more puppies available, but we hope patience will pay off with a puppy in the future. With such a great international interest in our dogs we feel we are very privileged and feel it is a positive sign for the breed that there is still interest in the standard type Siberian Husky throughout Europe as opposed to showdogs and extreme sprintracing dogs which are dominating in some countries.