dogs

Archived News Season 2003-2004

July 25th 2004 -- Though Summer doesn't seem to give its best performance so far, mushing activity is allmost non-existant and this gives us the oportunity to take a look at the past season and dream about the next.

In fact, the 2003-2004 season was quite special and unpredictable, but hey, every musher will agree that a season can be planned but is seldom completely executed as planned ;) Due to major works at our new house and some job-related demands, we weren't able to start in as much events as we would have wanted. In fact, we only attended at the VFS event in Hofstade, the SHT event in St-Vith and - most recent - the AMCB 4kamp in Hofstade, which isn't a race but a series of small events where one participant with one Malamute tries to achieve a maximum overall score - and of course, most important, has lots of fun. Arrow and Tim finished first in this event (out of 23 combinations) and with Sky he finished second in the puppy class. More info and pictures of these events in the race section.

We have many plans for the next season, but it isn't all mushing related. In fact, around mid-August, a little Sleeping Forester will see first daylight: we expect our very first child! We will have to adapt our lives to this wonderful event. Also, we still have some finishing-touches to perform in our house. And again, both our jobs remain quite demanding. But we hope to attend as mush races as possible, and we'll definitely do all we can to participate in some snow-races next season. Training starts around debut-September, and if we can rely on Sky's early try-outs during late Autumn training, we'll have a very competitive D2 or F2 team in the 2004-2005 season ...

February 26th 2004 -- St-Vith was somewhat a dissapointment for us this year. Oh, nobody is to blame for that: the organisation was fantastic, as were the participants :) There was some snow on saturday, but not really enough to have a decent race. Well, most teams still had a good trail, but the last teams where already running on mud or roads now and then. Sunday's race was cancelled. We had some problems as well: Karolien got really sick during the race, we even had to go home early. For the time we were there, we had lots of fun though, and Arrow & Sky weren't complaining at all :) We added a picture of St-Vith in the race section, thanks to JC. We also added a pic of Sky to her very own picture album.

January 28th 2004 -- We're going to St-Vith! Allthough we still have a lot of work in Ottenburg - where we are supposed to move-in-to somewhere near the end of March, we cannot resist to participate. It will be our second race of the year, and most probably also our last. See you there?

January 2nd 2004 -- Happy Newyear everybody! we're still busy in our home-to-be in Ottenburg. Sky is 12 weeks old now and is getting house-broken. She has no problems anymore with riding in the van. When we go and train with Arrow, she's anxious to come along! She keeps wining and running around until we get back ... and if she's set loose, she starts chasing us! Of course, she doesn't succeed in that :) Only the magic word - cookie - can turn her around ;) For 2004, we wish you all the best. We hope to participate in St-Vith, a possible snow race held on the 31st of January and the 1st of February. Some "snow" pictures were added in the Sky and Together sections of the dogs pictures, check them out!

December 26th 2003 -- We wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy Newyear!!! We uploaded some new winterpictures from Sky, Arrow and them together in the "dogs" pages. Some additional info about our dogs has been added as well.

December 11th 2003 -- In between the work-in-progress at our new house in Ottenburg, training with Arrow, working, co-developing the MBEL website and babysitting our new puppy Sky, I was able to come up with a new lay-out for the Sleeping Forest site. Our site was never a project as-such, it was intended to be nothing serious and thus unorganised :) But the site became bigger and, lacking a decent structure, hard to maintain. That's why this site is now "refreshed"...