Dogsledding in Finnish Lapland
Inari is the type of town that feels like you have arrived at the edge of the earth. Look on a map of Finland and let your eyes travel up- all the way up. There really isn’t much around for miles and miles except wilderness. For half the year it is cold, snowy and dark. A frontier town- a crossroads for Russian whores, reindeer herders and the local Sami people.
Outi’s sister Riina and her boyfriend Alex live in Inari, however. Their dog Luna only understands German, since Alex is German. Thus you had to say Halt for Stay and Nein! when the dog does something bad. Needless to say I only spoke to Luna using my best Rammstein voice. Speaking of Luna doing bad things, she had the interesting ability (or tendency) to eat just about anything. When we were out, she chewed up my toiletries bag and drank a whole bottle of our massage oil and ate 4 condoms out of their wrappers. I thought this was very funny but Riina and Alex were concerned enough to induce the dog to vomit and so then we went looking through a pile of oily dog vomit, smelling like sweet oil fragrance, to count if 4 condoms were in it. All the condoms were present but I was most dismayed to find them full of holes! (That will probably be the wittiest comment in this post.)
Riina’s boyfriend Alex works in a husky farm and took us dog-sledding one day. We arrived at the farm early one morning to find hundreds of dogs in kennels going quite beserk at the prospect of going sledding with strangers. If only I could have the same enthusiasm for exercise, I thought. The dogs are hitched up to the lines in packs of six, with three rows of two dogs each. No sooner were they hitched to the lines than they had got themselves into a massive excited nervous tangle, and no sooner did we untangle them before they were re-tangled.
After some quick instructions about getting the dogs to go (yell “Mush!”) and stop (yell “whoa” or “stop!” and jump on the footbrake), we were away. Initially, I stood on the rear of the sled controlling the dogs while Outi sat in front of me. Alex rode the sled in front of us alone and our dogs (usually) followed his. Wow, what an exhilirating way to travel the white tundra! The dogs would race like crazy along the flat or downhill, and you had to work hard to keep the sled under control. Respite would come as the dogs headed uphill, huffing and puffing and not stopping until they had reached the top.
The 6 dogs on mine and Outi’s sled were a mother and her children. Up front with the mother was a dog who looked strangely not like a husky at all, in fact he looked suspiciously like his father was the fox out of Little Red Riding Hood! What big teeth you have! Guess what his name was? Fox! He was the apprentice sled leader, learning from his mother, and he had such a good attitude. He looked so funny amongst the other pure bred huskies that he quickly became my favourite. Godspeed Fox!! (tear)
At one slight downhill run, I felt the dogs take off and to our left we saw a huge herd of maybe 50 reindeer. What a sight. Some of the reindeer were white and looked so elegant against the white snow. The reindeer took off, freaked out by the dogs, and the dogs gave chase. I stood on the footbreak as hard as I could but to no avail, and ahead of me I saw Alex’s sled roll as it went around a corner. He held on for grim life, getting dragged through the powder, as once the dogs go they will never stop. Somehow from this position he brought his sled to a halt, and after tying the dogs to trees and waiting for the reindeer to be out of sight, the dogs settled down again.
As the weather closed in, we built a fire in the forest, and huddled around it for warmth. We ate sausage and cheese and bread, before heading home for a well earned sauna.
