Help with Siberian huskies in Lapland

Details

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  Description

  We are a family with a kennel that has 80 Siberian huskies of all different ages. We live on a homestead in the arctic wilderness, 50km north of the Arctic Circle, in the heart of Lapland. Our family's forefathers were among the first pioneers who settled here back in 1733. We're looking for people who can help us look after our dogs.
  
  In spring and summer there's renovation and maintenance work in addition to the routine care of our dogs. It's also possible to go hiking, fishing, canoeing and windsurfing in your free time. In the autumn we train the dogs and prepare them for winter, so that we can go sledding with them in our forest.
  
  We normally have places for three to six months during the autumn and winter, starting in the first week of October or January, and places for a minimum of one to a maximum of three months from April onwards until the end of September. Before applying, please check our calendar for availability.
  
  We have been hosting workawayers since 2011.

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  Types of help and learning opportunities

  Language practice

  DIY and building projects

  Animal Care

  Farmstay help

  General Maintenance
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  Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

  We believe that one of the great benefits of any cultural exchange is gaining an understanding of other people's customs and lifestyles. Ours is at times hectic and at others quiet, adjusting to the rhythm of the seasons.
  
  What you learn here will depend on how proactive, motivated and receptive you are, and of course, what time of year you travel. In addition to learning how to care for our huskies, you can also learn about the wilderness and the way the few locals live up here, if you are keen to explore places nearby. You can join us when we go fishing in nearby lakes, hiking with the huskies, and picking wild berries and mushrooms. Hopefully, you will learn how to dress properly for the arctic weather, and how to be sensible in our challenging conditions. Also, you will be living with people from different cultures and with different personalities, so we hope this will give you a chance to refine your social skills.
  
  We are a bi-lingual family, with both English and Finnish spoken at home. So, you can practice your English, and if you want a challenge, we can teach you some Finnish - one of the most difficult languages in the world!
  
  This famous quote by naturalist Alexander von Humboldt sums up the way we feel about travel: “The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.” So hopefully staying here helps to broaden your own worldview.

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  Help

  We're looking for kennel hands/handlers who can provide routine care for our dogs, including feeding, exercising, monitoring their health, and cleaning kennels. Looking after our huskies means showing up on a daily basis, and includes training them as well as maintaining the kennel area. This also involves taking dogs for walks, brushing the dogs when they blow their coats, looking after sick, injured or recovering dogs, handling raw meat and bones while preparing their food, as well as clearing up the dogs' poop. Sometimes we go to dog shows and occasionally we have puppies that require extra feeding and attention. We usually fix sledding equipment and dog boxes ourselves, so help is needed here as well.
  
  Our winters usually last for around seven-eight months. In September-October, once the weather has cooled enough, we start training the dogs in preparation for the winter sledding season. This means helping to set up teams of excited, energetic dogs and taking them on runs with our quad bikes. Then from mid-November to mid-April we get busy and we need help with setting up sleds and dog-teams, in addition to the normal kennel routine. You can learn how to drive dog-teams and snowmobiles too. We pay our workawayers the going rate in winter - more information is provided during the application process.
  
  In May the snow starts to melt so it calms down but we still need to keep the dogs exercised and the kennel cleaned throughout the spring and summer. We sometimes need help in the garden and the forest too. We also cut and chop our own firewood and clear or maintain forest paths.
  
  We are looking for people who are confident, proactive, highly motivated, positive in nature, easy-going and energetic. You should also be genuinely interested in dogs. We expect you to be helpful and flexible in our sometimes difficult Arctic conditions, and eager to participate wholeheartedly in all of our activities. We'd like to teach you about huskies, and the culture, lifestyles and traditions of Lapland as well as the wonders of the Arctic wilderness, and we aim for a workaway experience that will be mutually rewarding :)

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  Languages

  Languages spoken
  English: Fluent
  Finnish: Fluent
  German: Intermediate
  Spanish: Intermediate
  French: Intermediate
  Swedish: Intermediate

  This host offers a language exchange
  This host has indicated that they are interested in sharing their own language or learning a new language.
  You can contact them directly for more information.
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  Accommodation

  The accommodation is provided for free and is in our cosy hundred-year-old lumberjack's cabin (picture below), which has been equipped with normal modern conveniences and is located next door to our own house. We expect you to keep the cabin clean and tidy at all times.
  
  In the cabin there are two pairs of bunk beds; one in a separate bedroom and another in an alcove off the living room. There is also a small kitchen area, tables, sofa, TV, fireplace, WiFi and a washroom with wc and shower. The cabin has electric heating and running hot and cold water. There is a separate sauna by the lake. All our accommodation is non-smoking. We usually have four volunteers and we allocate placements so that they are either all male, all female, or for one or two couples.
  
  Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate your own pets because recuperating or injured huskies sometimes live with you in the cabin. Also, our huskies sometimes "stay over" with you, if you want, whenever it suits everyone.
  
  You can cook your own food so bring a few of your own recipes to share. We also have some meals and afternoon tea together now and then and we always have traditional celebration meals together whenever there's a reason for it! We can accommodate vegetarians but we don't cook food for special dietary requirements such as halal or kosher.

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  What else ...

  Our dogs are lively, happy and strong individuals that require confident handling, personal attention and lots of TLC! It is physically demanding and can be in unpleasant or extreme weather conditions, so you should be healthy, have a strong back and a good level of fitness (eg. you should be able to do chin-ups and run a couple of kms). We are not looking for wannabe survival experts though. If you are travelling here in winter, you must be heavy enough to be able to stop a moving sled pulled by strong dogs. You must also not mind getting dirty and having dog fur everywhere!
  
  Hours will vary and during quieter times we usually keep to an average of four-five hours per day. In your free time you can explore the area and get to know our lakes and forests. In addition to what is available here, there are many other summer and winter sports available in nearby resorts, and travelling around the region by bus is quite easy, e.g. the nearest resort and national park is about an hour away. And although we live in a very sparsely populated area, there is a good range of shops and other services, as well as concerts, galleries, museums and tourist attractions in our nearest towns, also an hour away by bus.
  
  The compensation for our remoteness, however, is that we are situated by a beautiful little lake surrounded by the largest wilderness forest in the world - the taiga. If you like walking, hiking, reading, writing, painting, photography, etc. or just need to study, there is usually time for all that too. And if you're lucky, when the sky is clear in the autumn and throughout winter, you can go out into the garden and watch the northern lights dance through the night.
  
  We live in the land of the midnight sun and the polar night, which means we have 24hrs of daylight in summer and 24hrs with no sunlight for a month around mid-winter. We can also have some extreme temperatures: in 1999 the temperature ranged from -53C in February to +32C four months later! In general though, winters range from a mild -5C to a cool -30C and summers range between cold and rainy weather at around +5C and hot and dry at +30C, but mostly it's just warm at around +15-20C. There's plenty of mosquitos in summer too: food for all the birds and fish!
  
  We have many applicants for a very limited number of places. If our calendar is full and you are flexible with travel dates, please consider being on our waiting list for places which become available at short notice. And please be patient when waiting for a reply - we go through and finalise the majority of applications during spring/early summer only. The exception to this is if/when there is a last minute place.

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  A little more information

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    Internet access

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    Limited internet access

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    We have pets

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    We are smokers

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    Can host families

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  Can host digital nomads

  We have a 4G wifi connection

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  Space for parking camper vans

  We have space for a small campervan

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  How many Workawayers can stay?

  More than two

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  Hours expected

  5 hours/day, 5 days/week

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