15 Years Eräkeskus!

Yes - today we are celebrating 15 years of Eräkeskus! On November 6th, 2003, a small caravan, consisting of 1 lorry with furnitures, moveables and sled equipments, a Mazda Tribute with a huge double-decker dog-box and some 30 dogs to form the first Eräkeskus-pack and a Ford Focus arrived in Eräkeskus. 2 immigrants, 2 helpers for the first few days and the dogs made the place here alive again, after 6 years of being empty and unused!  

Since 2003, Eräkeskus changed from a small starter-company to a successful provider of programs for all seasons, at the moment with some 160 dogs and 9 team-members. Countless team-members arrived and kept on moving further, some made their first eexperiences to work with sleddogs here and by now they run their own companies. Every single team-member, no matter if long- or short-term, left his/her print here. Every single guest was/is important for our development and to learn more. All kind of feedbacks help us to re-think our doing, to get better, and make our daily job here so interesting. Best kind of confirmation of course are all the repeaters, customers that got friends and who return many times, every year again and again. Every single dog who run for and with us in those last 15 years, left his print in our hearts.  Sadly the last one who was here from the very beginning, old lady T-Pow, left us a few days ago and cannot take part in the festivities today. But sure there is a Dog-Eräkeskus-Party somewhere with all the gone pack-members. 

I am proud to be here since 15 years and run the company. There were not only good years of course, but there were 15 years of constant learning with countless good memories and experiences. I wanna say thank you to all my actual and recent team-members who contributed to the success-story for a while, for being part of it for a while. Thank you to "our" 2 Finns Ritva and Jani, who are always ready to help if some new legal matters come up and new rules have to be followed and implanted. Thank you to Mervi, our Vet, who is taking so perfect care of our dogs. And of course thank you to all partners, all guests, friends and other helpers who contributed in whatever way to the presence of Eräkeskus today! 
Simone

 

15 years of Eräkeskus do not change of daily routine a lot! We keep on training the dogs and getting them ready for winter. By now we do often night-runs and added 3 - 4 times per week the longer distance-trainings with 3 hours breaks outside. If you watch us today, you would not think it is a special day! We do not look like beeing older... only 1 of the starter-trees in the old kennels gave up a few days ago after having hold so many teams during the start-procedures in all the years before. His old roots could not hold him anymore...
Tonight, Chef Roger will cook us a delicious 5-course-dinner and tomorrow we start into year 16!

As part of the celebrations we got our kennels certified again. The papers arrived last week and we got "certification plus" again, highest level! Another reason to  be proud of!