Aatu
and Minna on hiking tour
Belive or not, but dandie is suitable for
different kind of hobbies like agility and obedience in
spite of having a long body and short legs. And I would
bet your dandie will not be the one who gets tired first
during daily outings. I like outing a lot and I walk about
8 kilometers daily. Naturally Aatu walks with me. One day
a strange idea came into my mind: "Why not back-pack
our things and go for a longlasting walk? One week journey
for a start... YES! We shall go hiking!!" Here is a
little story about it...
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the beginning of the year we had walked daily. Idea was to
practice our muscles (or at least those places where
muscles should be) so they would get used to 10 kilometers
exertion. Previous week went by washing laundry and
packing and get used to simple and dry food which we had
planned to eat during our hiking tour. In one Sunday
morning we woke up early, packed the car and drove into a
huge forest. There we stood, me and my dandie Aatu, my
friend and her collie Karo. We girls had our back-packs
and dogs got their tick-collars. We had planned the whole
way very easy for dogs ( ?! ): short daily walks and
marked paths or narrow country-roads to go. It was the
only suitable choise with short-legged dandie....
And
then it satrted - our hiking tour! We walked happily a
hole day towards our first sleeping place. The weather was
perfect; coludy and cool but not rainy. It was not too hot
for dogs to walk and everything was just the way we had
dreamed. Also our backpacks were easy to carry, not heavy
at all. And the dogs then... Karo was in heaven! She
jumped around us like a rubber-ball, but Aatu thought this
was a very serious situation. He followed me like my
shadow. Just in case. You know, it is still possible to
get lost in such strange place. Especially when you are a
tiny little Dandie with only 16-kilos weight. If we had
more than two meters between us Aatu looked like: "Mother
wait for meee...don´t go too far!!" |
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In
the evening we found our first camping-place. It was near
a little lake with nobody around. We checked out dogs in
case of ticks and went into the tent to get some sleep. We
were very tired after spending a whole day outside...too
much oxygen for two ladies working in office and get used
to sit behind desk a whole day. A good night sleep - YES!
Well, some of our friends had told us that first night in
tent with the dogs could also include something else than
sweet dreams. And so it was. My little dearest Aatu
deciced to do his duty, which was to tell us every single
sound he heard. "Quff...murr..quff..." He
sound like a cattle with boiling water in it. After a few
hours at least we humans fell asleep.
After
sunrise we woke up, packed our things and went on. And as
you can guess, thanks to Aatu, we were very sleepy.
Besides, somebody had put stones into our backpacks... |
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least we thought so. They felt so heavy. And our
muscles...they had dissapeared while we were asleep.
"12 kilometers IS NOT MUCH for one day to walk"
was our motto during the second day. We took many long
lasting breaks, told jokes to each other and at last we
saw our second camping-place. Our lookout man, Aatu, could
barely keep his eyes open for last two kilometers. Right
after eating we rushed into tent and after few minurtes we
were deeply a sleep. And this time not only us humas but
also the dogs.
Third day. We had to go over a huge
mire. We protected the dogs
and ourselves against mosquitos and did it very carefully,
because that place was full of them! The stuff we put on
smelled aughful! It really did. Dogs hated it and so did
we, but it helped. We had only dozen bites instead of
tousands.... We really SMELT!!
Then we had to walk on wood
made walking areas. We had trained that with dogs before
the hiking tour, so it was not new but anyway Karo refused
to walk on them. She had been hiking before and never did
so but this time...no way! We tried and tried...and time
went by. It was almost afternoon when we gave up and
decided to carry her. Why? Because the mire was too
large to walk around in few days and we didn´t want to
change our plans. We carried a collie! |
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Boy, she was
heavy...after 200 meters we had to take a break. We put
Karo down and she jumped around happily just like a
baby-rabbit!! Only a few ugly words came out from our
mouths....
Our luck! We had only two hot summer-days in that very
month in Finland and they were during our trip. Luckily we
had planned so we walked those days deep into the forest.
But unfortunately forest wasn´t cool enough. After few
kilometers walk the dogs were having troubles to go on. It
was simply too hot. We built up a camp and spent our day
by swimming, fishing and taking naps. The dogs enjoyed the
cool water and even Aatu tried swimming. He has funny way
to do it...he uses only his front legs while swimming. It
goes fine but looks very funny! And he seemd to be a
little worried about how to manage this strange new sport.
We rested all the day and continued hiking just after
sunset when it was a little cooler again.
There
are some other hikers in the forest too when it´s dark. I
mean bears, deers and that sort of animals. (Yes, we
do have even wolves in Finland...although only a few.) We
had no intention to meet them and we made sure they would
notice us coming and run away. We still smelled awful, but
if "Vinnie the Pooh" seemd to have a flu or we
would walk under the wind and he could not be able to
smell us we decided also make some noice. So we started
sining! |
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| Poor dogs.... The night went by and we had reached
our next camping-place. Time to sleep - again. We slept
only a few hours and continued walking as soon as it was
light enough to see. When it was too hot to walk we rested
for the end of the day. Just like day before:
swimming...swimming... And walking during night time by
sining stupid old songs. At the very moment we arrived our
next camping-place it started raining.
In
the middle of the night we suddenly woke up. Noice was
incredible! For a few minutes it seemed to us the whole
world (or at least our tent) was going to blow up! Aatu
was barking like mad and ran around the tent like he was
in sain. We heard something big running into the woods.
Oops...what was that monster? We were not brave enough to
check out. After a few minutes it was all quiet. Aatu went
back to sleep and so did we. In the morning we found out
it was a Lady Deer with her baby. Aatu thought they had
came little too close to our tent and his area. How
did sir Walter Scott put it? "If you don´t
want to be surprised by any stranger, always travel with
little terrier or two". |
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Only
two days left and it was raining. A hole day. All the time.
Not even a short break... and we were WET. We decided to
change our plans and go see if there were room for us in
local shelter made for hikers and hunters. "Two
women with wet dogs ...is there still room for us??"
And of course there was. We made company with three men,
also hiking. They had had some fish from the lake and we
spent our evening eating, talking and sitting next to
fireplace trying to dry our clothes. Suddenly Aatu stole a
hole show. He laid in the middle of the little cottage´s
floor and snored as loud as he could. We laughed tears in
our eyes and mes asked about that rough-coated creature. I
told them about dandies and told how to spell
d-a-n-d-i-e-d-i-n-m-o-n-t-i-n- t-e-r-r-i-e-r-i which it is
called in Finland. Quite a word isn´t it??!
Last
day of our journey. The men said bye-bye to us and to the
dogs and we rushed into the endless rain. We
sent a message to our family by mobile-phone and told them
the time we would reach our meeting place and they could
pick us up. We were tired and dogs were exausted and wet -
but happy. We did it!! We had a great time but it was also
nice to have a hot bath and have some REAL food.
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| We had a
small welcome party in my friends summer cottage. We told
everything about our trip and decided we must go again!!
Definitely!! And also the dogs seemd to enjoy hiking
because every time I sing a song we used to sing during
the hiking tour (a hole week the same song, time and time
again??!! Later we have wondered why on earth???) Aatu
looks at me, deeply into my eyes, and wags his tail... |
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Some extra photos here
included :-) And sorry about their quality.
At that time no one had ever heared about such thing as
digital camera ... ;-)
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<< in the
middle of the night... I wonder if we are going to meet
foxes or bears tonight?
>> Aatu relaxed
during a break.... He knew how to relax completely when
ever he got a change to do so!
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<< Shall
we go hiking again?? Lets go? Please!!!
>> Tired little boy
at home. Skleeping with Joona - dreaming about days in the
forest? |
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Repo - all rights reserved!
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