Norwegian Mushing Symposium

Our side business, DogPaddle Designs, is attemtpng to expand our sled sales to Norway and Sweden. Barry Siragusa of RoppHaugen Consulting in Norway agreed to help us try to import sleds to Norway.  We decided that the Hakadal Sledhunklubb seminar would be a great place to debut our sleds. So one of the things we have been doing around here is getting sleds all ready to go to Norway. Above, are the two first sleds going to Norway. One was for Barry for all is hard work and the other was for demonstration purposes.

After the sleds were built, Cody to take them all apart and package them for riding along on the airplane. It proved to be semi difficult to get 9 feet long sleds packaged for a ride on a plane. But the sleds made it to Norway, happy and healthy. Cody stayed with Barry and Kaia at their kennel.

They are near Gausdal, Norway. The valley they live in was beautiful with watefalls and great trails just outside their door.

While here, Cody got to see how the folks are  traininng dogs.. pretty much the same as a Alaskans... go figure. they even use harnesses and ganglines. ;)

Most mushers, however don't have the big gas guzzler dog trucks that most of us Alaskan mushers have. Most mushers seem to have vans or SUVs with trailers.

When it comes to dryland training, four wheelers aren't normally allowed here to go whereever you want like in Alaska, combine that with the fact that quads are about

               124, 900 Norwegian kroner = 22, 132.77 U.S. dollars, and dang..

So most mushers either use Non-motorized carts or their vehicles. In Barry and Kaia's case, they use their SUV. I got the chance to tag along on a few runs and see how some of the Norwegian genetic lines look. Looking good!.

Barry, Per Vinding and I spent a couple leirurely days assembling the sleds for Hakadal and then spent the weekend at the symposium. The Hakadka Sledhundklubb puts on a great symposium, very similar in size to our own held in Fairbanks. They had many great vendors there. It was great to see some of the different brands of gear that are used here, some with very different solutions to the same old gear. It was a great chance to network and get to know more about how races and mushing is done. There are probably more mushers Norway then Alaska, but I guarantee there are more sled dogs in Alaska.  

The symposium and trip were a success! Thanks to all of the hospitality while in Norway. We lookf forward to coming back more in the future. Hopefully with dogs one of these winters to try out the Femundlopet and Finnmarkslopet races. Thanks to Troll Hundefor for providing us with a good deal on a norwegian square dog cooker for this year's race season. Can't wait to get to melting snow!