The people behind Kennel Night Trail

Karina Andreasen - born in Odense, Denmark in 1968. Grew up in a family with Samoyeds. In 1992 I moved to Copenhagen to finish my education and life in a small apartment, was not the right place for me to have a dog, so for some years I did not have any dogs around me. In 1997 I moved into my own house and started looking for a dog… but what breed should it be ? I was sure that I wanted one of the polar breeds and after checking out the 4 polar breeds I decided on a malamute. What I fell for was the majestic appearance and behaviour composed with lots of personality for each individual. I was also very fascinated by the elegant silent move that very easy could be turned into a lot of muscle power and energy.
In april 1998 I purchased my first Alaskan Malamute from a Danish breeder and in June 1998 Alaskan Grace’s Cuddly Sanak moved in. By the end of the year it was obvious that Sanak could not be left alone at home, so I started to look for another malamute to keep him with company. Meanwhile I had come across Jette & Allan Hersinger a couple of times and they actually had a 9 months old bitch that was not accepted by their older bitch, so Czariks B-Xantia moved in at my house in January 1999. That became the beginning of the co-operation between Jette and myself – under the name of Kennel Black Lotus - we have had 4 litters from 1999 – 2004.

Rasmus Lund Helbo, Born in Roskilde, Denmark in 1978. Shortly after my birth our family moved to Jutland, where I grew up on a typical Danish farm. Over the years my father had a couple of litters of German Wirehaired Pointers (Deutsch Drahthaar) - so dogs as well as other animals on the farm have always been part of my daily life.
In December 1999 I finished my education as Contractos’s Mechanic and in January 2000 I moved to Copenhagen to work. During 2001 I spent 2 month backpacking in Australia. I have been fishing a lot over the last years and 3 weeks during the summer of 2001 and 2002 I have been in Alaska fishing King Salmon. In July 2002 Karina & I met and shortly hereafter I moved in at her place – along with that came my interest for the Alaskan Malamute breed.
 

Moving to Sweden

During 2003 we increased the number of dogs and our primary interested is on working the dogs and after being in Sweden a couple of times to sledge for some weeks every winter we started talking about moving to Sweden some day…
Some day suddenly became very realistic in the beginning of January 2004. Late December 2003 we bought a new sledge for Rasmus’ team and he wanted to test the sledge, before we were going to Särna for the Malamute week in February 2004. Therefore he went to Sweden for a couple of days with the new sledge and just two dogs and when he returned a couple of days later he had got himself a job at Komatsu in Östersund in Jämtland, Sweden !!!!
Suddenly things had to happen fast because Rasmus started the new job on February 1st, 2004. Then the search for the right house in Sweden started, as well as we had to sell our house in Denmark. First of all it was harder than expected to find a suitable place here in Jämtland, secondly it took close to seven months before the house in Denmark was sold. Finally we could move !!! On October 8th, 2004 we packed all our belongings and 9 dogs and drove the 1400 kilometers from were we lived in Denmark up to Järpen.

Artikel fra Fyens Stiftstidende, 18/01-2005
We bought the house in Järpen in August and Rasmus moved in to start building the dog pens. At the same time he was working fulltime in Östersund so it got pretty late almost every night before his day of work was completed. In September 2004 Rasmus changed job and started to work for a large contractor in Åre and he was lucky that he was allowed to use the machines in the company, so now things went faster – but with no doubts it has been very hard work building the dog pens.