Yesterday, although Quebec has a lack of snow, my husband and I had an amazing experience. We went dog sledding. Despite it being in jeopardy initially, luck was on our side.  A light snow fall overnight allowed it to happen. Without the snow, the track would have been to icy for us inexperienced sledders to manage.

Our venue was the spectacular Pourvoirie Du-Lac Beaufort only 20 minutes out of Quebec City.  For about 10 minutes in the shop, there were twice as many Australians as Canadians because the other couple booked to dog sled to our surprise were fellow Aussies.

Our first stop was to feed the Huskie puppies. They were so cute and ate from our hands.

Now we were off to complete our training to be able to drive a dog sled.  Manu, our musher explained that because of the ice they had only given us 4 dogs in our teams. Any more dogs would be too hard for the drivers to control. Then it dawn on us. This wasn’t going to be as easy as we first thought.

Manu was a very experienced musher and his team lead the expedition.  Our dog sled was the first for the day so the dogs were full of energy. We were given several instructions; the main one being to keep the dog teams apart as they will fight. Soon we got to experience stopping wasn’t as easy as any of us thought and the dogs kept running into each other. When this happened the front team started attacking the team from behind. Manu sorted it quickly and we were off again.

In the dog sled team, all dogs are trained to a specific position depending on their abilities. The smartest dogs are the lead dogs and there are two of them. They are the ones that sense danger and stop the team if things aren’t right. They also listen to the orders of the sled driver. The middle dog  was the point dog. He is a strong dog to pull the sled. The last dog is the wheel dog and he is the strongest dog giving extra help when needed.

Initially I sat in the sled and my husband was the driver. It took me 5 minutes to realise I didn’t want to drive as stopping was too tricky. At times we went close to ponds and I was very grateful I  wasn’t driving and that i didn’t end up in the water. When it came to change overtime Manu was very pleased neither of us ladies wanted to drive. His opinion was that the conditions were too hard for us to manage, which made it dangerous. It definitely was a psychical workout for the boys as they were sweating. I agreed, driving yesterday was a boy job and I was not offended. My job was photography and as we were moving quickly this wasn’t easy.  Fortunately we both succeeded at our tasks and we had a great morning.

If you ever get the chance connect with nature and go for a dog sled. It’s amazing.