Dog sledding

The icy air that burns your eyes, stings the skin on your face and fills your lungs with a breath of fresh air. The feeling of solitude in the middle of nature, with only the soundtrack of your dogs' jerky breathing, the sound of the sled's runners gliding over the snow and the distant crackling of branches. The feeling of being one with your team. To this day, it's our passion for dog sledding that keeps us eagerly awaiting the first flurries of snow.

When we had our dog shelter, we had fun harnessing 4-6 dogs to an old wooden sled we found on a classified ads site just to make them spend their energy all together. It all started in 2008 with a more than heteroclyte team made up of stray dogs of unknown breeds far from sled dogs breeds. However, these stray, unexperienced mutts ran several hundred kilometers with us each winter.

Dog sledding is an activity that, at first glance, may seem inaccessible and straight out of a movie. However, this discipline is more accessible than you might think, and is actually gaining in popularity in Canada. With the general craze for harnessed dog sports in recent years, "micro-mushing" (referring to small kennels of 3 to 6 dogs) is becoming increasingly popular. In general, as soon as 3 or more dogs are harnessed, we can talk about dog sledding, since with this size of team, a snow scooter would be too light and less safe.

Before harnessing so many dogs in front of a sled, you have to make sure that they have a minimum of experience in harness or that you have at least one good lead dog who will know how to guide them and keep them at a good pace. Harnessing more than 3 dogs who have never pulled a sled can quickly turn your outing into a real headache ;)

What equipment is needed to get started in the wonderful world of dog sledding ? Actually, you don't need a lot of equipment, but there are some essentials that will simplify your life in addition to allowing you to practice this activity safely :

Dog pulling harness Harnessing: in dog sledding, the attachment point of the hitching system is much lower than the dog's back, so the pulling force exerts direct pressure on the dog's hips. As a result, it's essential to have a harness that's suitable for pulling and that offers good support for the back (strap that forms an "X") to distribute this pressure and free the hips. Dog sledding is a fairly intense harnessed canine sport, so good padding is essential to offer your dog maximum comfort - our dog pulling harness uses dense closed-cell foam padding that offers waterproofness and very low abrasion compared to many harnesses available on the market;

Dog sledding Of course, otherwise you won't get very far! There are a huge number of models available on the market, depending on your budget, the size of your team and the type of outings you want to do (sprint, trek or distance). The materials used are equally diverse, ranging from wood to plastic, aluminum and carbon. Our SIGMA dog sled has been specifically developed for teams of 2 to 4 dogs. Made entirely of aluminum, it combines lightness, strength and durability. It's a hybrid model, since its low weight (21 lbs) and handling make it an excellent sled for sprinting, but it has also proved its worth on long rides in powder snow where tracks were sometimes absent;

Bungee The pulling dynamics of dog sledding are very different from those of other harnessed canine sports, such as the skijoring or bikejoring. Most of the time, you'll be standing on the dog sled and letting your dog(s) pull. The load pulled by the dog(s) is therefore much more static than in bikejoring, where the rider is dynamic and propels himself forward by pedaling. These factors mean that a regular bungee line cannot be used for dog sledding. The bungee needs to be very stiff so as not to create excessive energy loss by constantly stretching when the dogs are pulling, but still absorb impacts to protect the dog. Our bungee for dog sled has been developed. It will stretch and absorb impact when starting off, resuming on a slope or braking suddenly, but will not stretch constantly with each dog's stride;

Gangline(s) : it is the gangline that allows you to keep your dogs together as a team. The bigger your team, the more successive ganglines you will have. For example, at 4 dogs, you will only need a gangline and add 2 tuglines to the front (for the 2 lead dogs). If you harness 6 dogs, you will need 2 successive ganglines and 2 additional tuglines at the front (for the 2 lead dogs). The use of a neckline is recommended;

Tugline(s) as mentioned previously, the tugline is found at the very front of your team and allows you to harness the lead dog(s). If you want to have 1 or 2 dogs at the front of your team, you will need to adjust the number of tuglines accordingly. These lines are always found at the front of your harnessing system no matter the number of ganglines;