The Alaskan Malamute Week
Särna February 2005

The Alaskan Malamute Week – Särna February 2005.This year we went to Särna only to participate in the race on Friday and Saturday. On Thursday morning (24th of February) we managed to find room in the van for 12 dogs and all the equipment, food etc. to be "on the road" for a couple of days with 2 teams. Off to Särna we went and arrived there around 16.00 – unpacked the van, got the dogs out and started the preparations for next day’s competition. It was our intention to run a 6-dog team and a 4-daog team, but we had some doubts about the 4-dog-team, because our old male Sanak had been limping on and of the week before and one of the females – Xsara - had not showed a very good form over the last days training passes, but when we packed the van we took the chance and brought both teams (plus two 12 weeks old puppies) and hoped Sanak and Xsara would do fine. We did not make the final decision weather we should run one or two teams before Friday morning and unfortunately Sanak did not do too well, so we decided to go for the sure thing; only to run the 6-dog team. Rasmus ran the 6 dog-team and they did pretty good. On Friday they ran the 30 kilometers at 2 hours and 30 minutes. On Saturday they managed the same trail at 2 hours and 23 minutes. A total time of 4 hours and 53 minutes meant that all 6 dogs passed the Swedish Polar test 1 without any problems.

The 6 dogs on the team were:
> Black Lotus Magical Mystery Tiger – "Kiskayo"
> Aluk’s Dressed In Black – "Sequoia"
> Black Lotus Tigress Frequent Flyer – "Xander"
> Aluk’s Still Going Black – "Shenoa"
> Taolan Master Of The Game – "Sam"
> Snowrider’s Flashdancer – "Willow"

The other 4 dogs where run about 10-15 kilometers both days after the competition – they sure also wanted to go ! The two puppies – Cougar & Xsandy – was walked around the start & finish area, meeting a lot of people and dogs and had a lot of fun and learnt a lot about the "big world" out there – very good puppy training.