Happy dogs policy

Happy dogs

We take great pride in our animal welfare policy! Happy dogs means happy owners, happy guests and happy guides. Other than that, we don’t think there is anything better in the world than to see our dogs happy!

Our happy dogs policy does reflect in the prices of our tours – we don’t want to compete with the low budget sledding companies, as this would inevitably lead to worse care for our dogs and lower quality of the tours. You get what you pay for – if you book with us, you can rest assure that our dogs are well taken care of and they love working with us!

We have our base in Arctic Sweden. That means that our dogs live in our kennel year round, and they are not just here for the season – and they are not parked on a chain in the forest for the winter!

We have a permit to keep 35 dogs in this kennel. The kennel is regularly checked by a government agency and is fulfilling all the latest requirements.

The dogs are living two and two in every pen. Every pen has access to two dog cabins, one for each dog – although some of them prefer to sleep together with a friend! The dogs are not tethered in the kennel. In the centre of all the pens, we have a big play yard where the dogs can run free every day.

During the week tours, the dogs sleep tethered to a stakeout line. We provide them with fresh hay, so they can sleep off the cold ground. Most of them will also get a dog jacket to protect them from the cold. We appreciate our guests helping with these chores! We believe that you can only run the dogs if you also take care of them.

In winter we feed the dogs three times per day. We water them in the morning with meat soup, they will get a snack after running, and in the end of the day, they get a dinner consisting of high energy pellets and meat soup. In summer, we feed the dogs once a day, and they have unlimited access to water.

We vaccinate our dogs on a yearly base. If a dog gets sick or injured, we consult a veterinarian or visit the local animal hospital.

We run our dogs for as long as they are physically able to do so. When they get too old for the week trips, we retire our dogs, and they get to live on the big yard in the centre of all the kennels. They might occasionally come along on a training run with the young dogs, but they don’t have to run if they are too old. Other than that they can exercise on the big play yard. They also play an important role in balancing out the pack, which needs both young and old dogs. Sometimes we take an older dog to live inside the house, but not all of them like that!

When a dog gets seriously ill (eg cancer) or injured, and medical care will no longer help, we will take our responsibility as a dog owner and ask the veterinarian to put the dog to sleep.