There was a seminar organized in the weekend of October 6 and 7 in Kiruna Sweden.

The Kiruna Sleddog clubinvited some interesting speakers for this weekend.

 

 

Our flight went from Amsterdam-Stockholm-Kiruna with a stop in Östersund.

The temperature on the day we left from Holland was 15 degrees Celsius and the same night and the next morning it was exchanged for a few degrees Celsius above the freezing point

Together with Roderick and Sandra we’ve traveled about 2700 kilometers from Holland to the high north of Sweden. Once arrived we rented a car and went to the  Scandic Ferrum

Kiruna is known for the winning of iron ore. One of the famous mines is the Kiirunavaara. It exist of a ore field which is 4 kilometers long and 200 meters wide, enough for another 150-200 years of core winning. We could see the mine from the hotel.

The mine in Kiruna is one of the biggest mines in Europe and is still in use. The iron ore is brought by train to Narvik, from there it is shipped over the Atlantic Ocean.

The symposium was opened by the president of the KSHK the next morning, with a welcoming speech and with the announcement that the winner of theIditarod,

Lance Mackey, couldn’t be there because of circumstances

There was also a little fair where you could buy necessaries for the dogs and the sleddog sport in particularly.

The first lecture was of the Norwegian Hege Ingebrigsten of theFunracing kennel.. She told about her training and handling her dogs. She held also a plead for the cartraces. Those are less common in North Europethan in Middle Europe

Her vision on the training of the dogs and handling the dogs was primarily focused on making the dogs happy and keep them happy. She showed a couple of pictues of swimming pools made especially for the dogs

 The couple Haris and Ginger Dunlap, of the famous “ZERO” kennel, flew especially in for this weekend from the USA. We went especially to Sweden to meet them. They gave their view on breeding working dogs.

They were pleasantly surprised to hear that many of the dogs from their kennel were stillon many pedigrees

of well performing kennels today in Europe.