The adventure initially started when we arrived late at the BnB we had booked, then e-mailed and confirmed our reservation, apparently it had been double booked! The host tried to call around to find another place for us to stay but no one was picking up the phone. It was looking rather grim.... until we were offered to stay in the daughters room (never did find out where she slept)... It was good that we had a place to sleep, but man was the pull out couch crap! At least we weren't running around at 10:30 at night in a small town close to the dogsled course trying to find a room (and we don't speak Italian).
The next morning we started early driving up the nearby mountain to 1800m where the dogsledding course was. It was in an old converted power generation building close to the top of the pass run by a husband and wife team. The road was long and winding and the last 300m or so on a closed road. There were lots of dogs in fenced in areas and kennels and a few running around, peeing everywhere since they had the run of the place. Humans too apparently, since the pipes had burst after cold weather there was no toilet for us trainee's to use so we had to go around the side of the building and squat!
The location was fantastic though, and right behind the dog course we could see iceclimbers ascending the frozen waterfall. We were lucky that there were only four of us for the course, usually there were eight people in the course.
We started by listening to him describe the different breeds used for pulling and all the different types of dogs that he had around the facility.
Next we watched a video with discussion about the technique and information about dog sledding, this was a big tricky as the video was in Italian, our guide spoke Italian and French and then I needed help understanding the French. The owner had a lot of experience and he was a very good teacher, patient and interested and helpful. Apparently he has taken his dog teams in many places in the world, he always said how Canada was the most beautiful (the northern parts of it I have never traveled to). He described the difficulties of being with a team on a multi-day race and how hard it is to work and go to the bathroom at -60C! He and another guide had been responsible once for 60 dogs as part as a North Pole excursion with a bunch of scientists. He had lots of stories to tell, too bad I only got it filtered through two languages!
I noticed that some of the technical words used where English, lead dog, wheel dog, and apparently everywhere people use Gee and Haw with the exception of France (of course France is the exception!). However, we never needed to learn about driving the dogs, we were just going to learn how to stay on the sled and control it behind the dogs.
When I asked him, the owner said he was familiar with the tales of Jack London and the accuracy of it (for the way things were done 50 years ago), and the mentality of the dogs (of course, with understanding of the necessity of embellishing a tale).
After the video instruction we went out to practice first behind the snowmobile and it was harder than it looked! You had to stand on the runners, keep yourself upright with a straight back and shift your weight by moving the hips from one side to the other. It was hard to take the turns and control the sled and not slid off the track.
Then the dogs came out, a bunch of them released from their kennels and coming running at the call. They were connected to the sled line (by brass clips because apparently the clips would freeze but you could melt them with the heat of your fingers because brass conducts heat quickly) and then the team of 6 dogs were connected to the sled. All the other dogs set to mournful howling because they wanted to run, it echoed around off the surrounding cliffs and sounded quite interesting!
Then the dogs followed behind the snowmobile with the owner sometimes shouting in instructions to the dogs or to us.
The attitude of the dogs was interesting, my first time around the track with the dogs I didn't push kick to help the sled, I worked on improving my pretty poor form and the dogs didn't go very quickly. The owner described their attitude with a middle finger (the international gesture he said laughing); the dogs expected you to help and not just ride. The second time I went around the track I pushed a lot more, lots of work! I fell a few times now since I was off balance more. The important thing was to not let go of the sled. The dogs would keep running if you released the sled, in part because it was light and in part because they knew if they just stopped the sled would run them down. Instead you had to hold on and be dragged a bit and then get up and right the sled.
It was nice that we were all a smaller group since we got to try behind the snowmobile once and twice behind the dog team.
After the running the dogs were taken off the sled line again and given some water while we said goodbyes.
Some other interesting things I learned:
The dogs are given frozen food because they have to eat it slower and cut it into smaller pieces so they don't have a big chunk of meat giving them trouble sitting in their gut.
The sled runners don't have sharp edges because it is dangerous in an accident.
A potential lead dog is identified as early as 3 months old, they develop a close relationship with the owner but aren't suck-ups in behaviour. The other dogs acknowledge their leadership and the lead dog is always working, keep discipline and for example would be the first to the food, but would have all the other dogs eat while making sure all other dogs got a share, and then would eat.
One final thing, apparently you can work at Tiziano Ruffa for room and board and I guess learn a bit about dogsledding at the same time. I'm not sure how long you would need to commit, but I would think on the order of months, not weeks. It could be a pretty cool way to see something interesting in the world, practice Italian/French and learn how to work with sled dogs!
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