Even if the time of mountains and trails dressed in white hopefully is getting closer every day, our dear editor asked me to share a somewhat strange experience some ignorant tourists might have witnessed in a valley in Telemark this summer. Out of the bush come 4 slobbering husky-tongues, followed by a funny rig with logs attached to it. And in a long rope behind it all, the huskies' owner, also he with a slobbering tongue. This was the first load. After having made the trip once the dogs knew the trail and the rest of the trips were made more or less under control.
In connection with renewing the roof of the barn on our mountain farm, the need for transporting timber became present. Due to lousy planning we hadn’t managed to transport the timber needed for the roof during the winter-season. I didn’t look forward to pull heavy logs by hand, but as a former pupil of The Norwegian Technical College for Forestry I had a certain idea of how to make a rig the dogs could pull a log or two with. After about 20 minutes the new rig was finished., a sort of a sled with rough plastic –runners which theoretically could easily be manoeuvred at an uneven surface consisting of stones and tufts.
In the summer, people used to bring their livestock to their mountain farms,- we bring our dogs. Kari harnessed a couple of dogs in front of the new rig(without logs, mind you!!) held onto a rope fastened to the rig and disappeared along the path towards our cabin. Tuva, Hein, me and the rest of the dogs left the car a bit later, and we are pretty sure we heard sweet, little curses left behind her along the path. When we arrived the cabin, my wife could tell me that the rig also could be dragged upside down…
After a couple of days we decided to try out our new useful equipment. I chose 4 of our strongest males, and together with a very sceptical-to-the-whole-idea-brother-in-law we took 2 dogs each and went to take home some logs. We used some time to adjust chains and lines, but finally two logs were fastened to the rig with the thickest part in the front….and the dogs were ready!! The weight of the two logs were probably close to 200kilos, but the dogs jumped forward, full of energy. The idea of walking slowly behind didn’t work out; it was more like full throttle! At one stage we really had to run to keep up with them. Over marches, through thicket, straight across a river and finally stopping in front of the old barn.
If my brother-in-law had worn a hat, he would have taken it off to bow to this magnificent achievement. I was truly impressed by the power this dogs had in them myself. After the first trip the lead dogs knew the way, as I have already mentioned. This made the work a lot easier, especially considering that much of the thicket was mowed down after the first trip…. The warm weather also made the dogs less eager after a while and I finally had the feeling of control. The dogs enjoyed the experience as well. They got short breaks between each “job” and of course excess to water. We tried out the same system gathering the winter supply of firewood in the days that followed. We tried out all the dogs, giving them different loads according to their abilities.
The conclusion must be that this was a good way of exercising the dogs during a calmer training period or to use it as specific strenght training in early season. That you break a sweat yourself doing this shouldn’t hurt either..
Things that might be good to think of:
Go for short sessions. Always be sure to have water(and shade) ready for the dogs. This is supposed to be fun!
Think through how you are going to handle the dogs without a load behind them…if you are going to use more than a couple, getting them to the place you put on the load can be quite a challenge(that is for those of us who don’t have the most obedient dogs)
Fasten the logs well!! Put the thickest end of the log in front. We used chains to fasten the logs, maybe that was not the best?
While pulling, be sure the dogs keep a steady pace, so the load is easy to pull,- slight running pace for us humans?
A long rope with a lope at the end is a must. It should be long enough so you can reach the leaders and also so you can go behind the logs. You fasten the rope to the front of the rig.
I used 20 minutes to make ours. See bottom picture.
Ulf
