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I’m a professional dog musher. Dogs are banned from Antarctica so that means today the domain for dog sled expeditions is in the north. I live and work with my 17 Greenland Dogs. Home is in Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland. It is the remotest inhabited place in the western world, home for 450 people and over 500 working Greenland Dogs. By remote I mean 500 miles from the nearest community. My house is my permanent base-camp where everything revolves around the well-being of my dogs. From here I plan, prepare and train for journeys.
The Greenland Dog was brought into Greenland during the last major Thule Culture migration from Canada at around 1100 AD. In all that time Greenland’s dog population is believed to have been totally isolated from the rest of the world and even now it’s illegal to import dogs other than Greenland Dogs above the Arctic Circle in Greenland. Everything about the breed is vast and strong. They despise physical and mental cowardice and are aggressive in their appetite to do what they've been bred to do and that's pull massive payloads in terrifying cold. For over 2000 years the selection process was, if you pulled hard, you lived.
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Recently published research findings have clarified that the Greenland Dog and Canadian Eskimo Dog populations are of exactly the same dog breed. Greenland has over 20,000 working dogs. They are living cultural icons.
In the depths of winter we have 56 days of total dark, often at 40 below zero, cold enough to turn spit into ice cubes. People have been know to die walking from one house to the next. My dogs thrive in the cold and hate the heat.
No vet works here. The nearest is in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, which is 1,500 km away. Any veterinary problems and I’m emailing the vet digital pictures for a diagnosis. I fear bloat. Greenland Dogs are susceptible to this killer condition, where a full stomach twists and prevents gas from escaping.
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I’ve built dogs boxes here, the first ever seen. It caused quite a stir. In summer my dogs can follow the shade, it gives me somewhere to hang water buckets and during ice-break up they can get out of the slush and wet. In summer my dogs have water at all times. On winter journeys I melt snow for them.
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Puppy vaccines, annual boosters and rabies shots are available here. In tablet form I worm my dogs twice a year with Bayer's Drontal Plus to remove tapeworms, hookworms and whipworms. I do this a month after ice break up, usually in July, and freeze up, November, to catch the egg cycle.
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It can snow any month of the year here and summer warmth never arrives, despite 70 days of perpetual daylight. In summer I travel on foot the way ancient Inuit travelled throughout their Arctic summers crossing rivers and tundra with dogs. My pack contains supplies and the dogs carry their own Nutrience. At night my dogs are a vital deterrent against predatory bears while I sleep.
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What do I feed my dogs?
From pup to adulthood my dogs are fed Nutrience. I feed Nutrience Active every day, sometimes twice. I supplement this in extreme cold with pure animal blubber. A Greenland Dog’s diet can be 60% animal fat. They are the only dog breed in the world that can metabolise their body fat into water.
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I feed my dogs Hagen Nutrience because:
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• It oversees the nutritional well-being and ultimate health of my dogs to reach their full potential as the world’s ultimate working dog breed;
• One last point. The kibble is fit for human consumption. I know because I’ve survived an expedition eating it.
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• Feeding the right food isn’t just about physical well-being. I want my dogs to be mentally fit too. Lead dogs are the brains and without them my dogs go nowhere. Loads is my number one lead dog. It takes a special dog to fill the role. Girly is another leader. I never run a puppy in a team until it's at least a year old, at this point it'll be harnessed for the first time. Bigness is one of Girly’s pups and in his first season has shown me great signs that he’s leader potential; |
• October to July is my snow season, the time to condition my team, train yearlings and travel. I average working 2,000 journey miles every year running 12 to 14 dogs in a team, sometimes pulling half-ton payloads in terrifying cold. All my dogs are fed Nutrience because I want their calorific output to be fuelled and nutritional needs replenished efficiently; |
• Nutrience is practical, clean and always fresh for me to feed all year. Yearly we have two icebreaker re-supply ships with cargo that includes my dogs’ Nutrience. In summer I feed Nutrience dry. In winter I add water to feed bowls. My house is on a riverbank and 100 metres from the Arctic Ocean. Land locked sea ice freezes over come October. I’ve no plumbing at home and haul all water for my dogs. In terrible storms I soak Nutrience so it doesn’t blow away; |
• Sometimes for three months I’m never home. Journeys can be hundreds of miles long like the 400-mile journey I made last year to Ella Island in the world’s biggest National Park. When I am home, kennel work is dominated by getting dogs journey-fit through feeding, conditioning and training. Nutrience guarantees all the hard work pays off; |
• My dogs have a double pelage up to 20 cm thick. When their fur sheds it's called “blowing”. It can happen any time of year but usually it's a summer occurrence that requires huge effort on the dog’s part. Because Nutrience is consistent quality it fuels the big demands that occur naturally to my dogs; |
• I live and work in extremely isolated wilderness locations. The terrain I cross is very often dangerous and the wildlife has a tendency to eat people. On a journey my dogs’ reaction to bears is always the same, they point like arrows in the same direction sounding off with “gruff”….. “gruff”. I like to know everything I carry with me is about as perfect as it can be. For a month’s travel my sled’s half-ton will be made up in part with over 300 kg of Nutrience dog food. Perfect dog food; |
• Re-supplies or depots I get out by boat, snowmobile, helicopters, planes on floats, skis, or wheels. There’s an awful lot of rough and tumble and my Nutrience has seen it all. Hagen packaging of Nutrience is as good as it gets. Even at 40 below zero I’ve never had a bag split; |
• So what? People looking to use Hagen dog food might not want to do what I do with my dogs in the Arctic but they can be guaranteed that they’ll have purchased top-notch dog food for their own dog to enjoy the same nutritional and healthy benefits. Why else would they want to feed anything else? |
To find out more about Gary Rolfe’s adventures and view some of the incredible photos he’s taken, simply click on the link below.
www.garyrolfe.com
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