Welcome to our summer dogsledding excursions just for Alaska cruise passengers!
During the months of May through September, our sled dogs enjoy their summer vacation. One of their favorite pastimes during these months is getting to know our guests and visitors to the Uncommon Journey’s Homestead. For our guests just off their cruise adventure, we offer a 90 minute demonstration and tour of our kennel, dog yard and sled dog training facilities at the Homestead.
In addition to making new 4-legged friends while on our tour, you will learn all about the Alaskan Husky breed:
- The breed’s history
- Characteristics of Alaska Huskies including how sled dogs are conditioned and trained for the winter season
- The physiology that makes them so suited to long distance running
- What they eat
- And how we socialize them with their teammates to achieve such a remarkable group of dogs.
You’ll discover how we keep ourselves and our winter guests warm while working outside all winter, sometimes in temperatures as low as -40F/C (we’ll also let you in on the secrets of keeping hands and feet warm). And finally, our selection of dogsleds will be on display so that you can see how the sport of dogsledding has evolved and what that has done to the primary piece of equipment, the sled. The grand finale of our program provides each guest with a front row seat as a team is hooked up for a short demonstration run. At this point you will see first hand that huskies are indeed, born to run.
As we take you into the dog yard, you’ll get to meet and greet all our 4-legged friends. What you will find as you move amongst our dogs is that they are gentle, trusting and more than willing to hand out some unconditional love. Uncommon Journeys is the only kennel in North America we have ever heard of where the dogs are so socialized that we can invite 8,000-10,000 visitors into our dog yard each summer to visit and play with each and every one of our 55 Alaskan Huskies. We often have groups of young children visiting for summer canoe and hiking trips and these kids can play in the Uncommon Journey’s dogyard - completely unsupervised. In fact, our dogs are socialized from birth so intensely that many of our dogs will sleep with our guests in their yurts or cabins during the guests' vacation!
Of course there are some characters like Buster, who starts to throw his “Kong” toy around as soon as guests come near, encouraging them to partake in a game of catch, Herschel whose clear blue eyes peer out from his black face beckoning you closer until he can give you a big smooch (he has developed a taste for women’s cosmetics), and Orion who jumps 3 feet straight up in the air, then leaps onto the roof of his house and hands you his paw.
There are also world-class Yukon Quest and Iditarod dogs that are enjoying their post-race careers with us at Uncommon Journeys. These dogs are often too slow to compete with the top place teams by the time they are 4 or 5 years old but still have a strong desire to be part of a team. As such, they make great additions to our dogteams in the winter. Tex came to us from Hans Gatt in the summer of 2004 and has the honour of winning the Yukon Quest International Dogsled Race in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Tex is now fully retired and has joined the ranks of our ‘pet dogs’. Fleece is Tex’s partner in crime and was also on all three of Hans’ winning teams. Fleece is a few years younger than Tex and is still one of our main lead dogs.
One of the main reasons we are fortunate enough to have these retired race dogs is our attention to detail with regard to our dog care. Uncommon Journeys runs one of the premiere sled dog kennels in the world. In fact, we are often referred to as the “Club Med” for sled dogs! We take great pride in keeping our kennel immaculately clean and providing ample opportunity for our dogs to get out and play all summer long.
Known internationally for our outstanding dog care, we were the first kennel in Canada to be awarded Mush with PRIDE’s highest level of kennel certification, “Certification Plus”. Our outstanding reputation in the dogsledding world has allowed us to provide some of the most remote and exciting dogsledding adventures to our guests. To date, we are the only company that has been issued permits by the Canadian and Yukon governments to lead commercial dogsledding trips to Hershel Island Territorial Park and Tombstone Territorial Park.
