Elisa Deutschmann

JEANETTE: Nearly 40,000 people are following the adventures of today’s guest and her husky, Finn. They have traveled to eight countries together, and today she will share her best tips on trail running with her dog. Elisa Deutschmann from Germany, welcome.   ELISA: Thank you, thank you. Nice to be here.   JEANETTE: Yes, we’re very happy to have you here. You are an influencer?   ELISA: Yeah, that’s right.   JEANETTE: You and your dog, Finn. Can you tell us a bit more about yourselves?   ELISA: My name is Elisa, as you already have heard. I’m living together with my husky, Finn, normally in Germany. I think for two years, I started to share all my photos and adventures which I and my dog are doing to Instagram. I uploaded pictures and videos about my life, about all the sports we are doing together, and yeah, it started to get more and more popular, and I think people like it and love to see what we’re doing. That’s why we’re always out and having fun. It’s nice to see that people get motivated about it. I think it’s nice. It’s a little bit more about how everything works with him, because it’s always important to do something together.   JEANETTE: And you really are an outdoor person, and so is your dog. Can you tell us a bit more about Finn?   ELISA: It’s my first dog ever. Before I got him, I knew I need a dog which was really robust so he can do everything I do and I don’t have to bring him warm jackets or so that he’s safe and ready for adventure. So I chose a Siberian husky. I got him when he was 8 weeks old, and now he’s already five and a half. We’ve made a lot of adventures together, and it works really well. So that was the point – that was when I said, okay, I need a Siberian husky. After five and a half years, I really know it was the right decision, and we’re a really good team together. I can’t think of a life without the dog.   JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit about the adventures you’ve had so far? You’ve visited many countries and you have been on top of mountains, you have been running down mountains together, winter, summer, everything.   ELISA: That’s true. I’m traveling a lot with my dog. To be honest, the first holidays or adventures, I was not that prepared how to do everything with a dog because it was my first dog. The first holidays we made were to some really hot countries like Albania and stuff like that. If I’m thinking right now about it, it was not that nice because it was way too hot. But I think that’s the way you learn and how you can prepare everything better for your next adventures.   After all that experience, I focused my holidays more on like Norway, countries which are colder or whatever, Netherlands, things like that. Right now it works really well. I was before really into the mountain stuff, but through my dog I became more and more into it. As you may know, we started to get into trail running and all that kind of stuff.   Of course, if you have a dog, I think your life changes a little bit. It’s not like you go to the Bahamas and make holidays there. After that, we’re doing a lot of that stuff, but for both, it’s our passion and we love to be in the mountains. It’s insane.   JEANETTE: Do you have any advice if you plan to go to a totally different country with your dog? You don’t know how it is when it comes to temperature, where to go, where the nice trails are. How do you navigate when you do research before your trips?   ELISA: After a while, I really know my dog really well and I know what fits him and what doesn’t. If we’re going to a really warm place because we have to go or something like that, then I know that my dog loves to swim. That’s a really good point, because I always can put him in the water and he can cool a little bit down.   But if it’s maybe too hot, I always search for shadows and stuff like that. I think it’s really important that you know your dog really well. That’s how I prepare it, and I think we’re a really good team, so we can figure everything out together and everything works quite well.   JEANETTE: When it comes to water, how do you do it when you’re on the mountaintop and there might be no lakes or small rivers, or you don’t have any extra water with you?   ELISA: That’s a really good question. Normally when I know where to go and I know there are a lot of rivers and mountains, then it’s no problem for us drinking the water. But I already had it once where I was really far up in the mountain, and I expanded my trip. It was not that long a plan, but I said, “Okay, it’s fine. We will find some water.” Then we were at the top and I saw Finn needed some water and we had nothing.   Then I just picked up my bottle and gave him all my water. I think it’s always important to have enough water for you, of course, but also more for your dog. It’s really important to think about it. But it was good that I still had some water.   But normally, as I said, I always plan it, and when I know I’m going to areas which have no water, I bring – I’m not sure how they call these dog bottles, where you can fill them with water – and bring that for him. It works quite well. I also know how much he needs. Of course, it depends on the temperature, shadow, all this stuff. But that’s how we can figure it out. I always try to be a really good dog mom. [laughs]   JEANETTE: When you go hiking and running, how do you prepare your dog for this?   ELISA: I start to train a lot. For a month I did my first real race, trail run race, and for that we trained half a year or something like that. When it’s hot I always go out really early in the morning or really late so that the dog is not starting to get too hot. The last race was 22 kilometers and 1,200 meters high, so I know it’s a long way.   We started with some shorter uphill runs, like 5k, stuff like that. It was really cold, but after a while, we also started to run more at lunchtime, stuff like that, because I knew the race would be at the same time. So I looked at when it is and that my dog feels really comfortable doing the race and it’s not something new. He was really used to the long distances and everything after the half year. I think that’s really important. It’s not like you take your dog and say “Okay, now we are going for a 20k run,” because he’s not known to that. It’s super important that you train your dog for that and that you do it step by step.   Also, during the race, I made some breaks. He got some water, and I was always looking for him. That’s also not that easy because if you’re going for a race with a dog, it’s not only about you that you have to take care of. It’s also about your dog. When the race started, it was a little bit too warm, so the first 5k I was really afraid and took it super slow and had a look at him.   But after a while it starts to rain, and then the temperature goes down. Then I also saw on him that he was really into it and feeling good. I think it’s important that you really have a good connection to your dog. It’s not only a dog, it’s my best friend, my everything, and I really can see when he’s doing well or when he’s doing not well, when he needs water, a break. That’s important, and that’s how I prepare everything for it.   JEANETTE: What kind of equipment do you need for doing this?   ELISA: I’m always using Freemotion harness for Finn because it fits him really, really well, and he’s been using it already for 4 years, so I know it works. I don’t change it so much because I think that it fits good is really important, that he can breathe and run really good. Then I’m using the running line, super simple, and the running belt. Everything is super light and comfortable, and that’s really important if you go for long, long trails.   But he’s not always running on the leash, because when I’m up on the mountain and running down, it’s super important that he’s not pulling too much for me, because otherwise my knees or other stuff are destroyed after a while. So he has to run behind me. That’s also something which I trained really, really early with him. Because it’s a Siberian husky, it’s not like a border collie, which is doing everything you want. So we had to train a lot for it. After a while it worked, and now he’s running behind me and sometimes I put the leash away.   JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit more on how you trained him to walk behind you? Did you use a treat behind your back? What did you do?   ELISA: It was quite hard at the beginning. I was not used to how to do it. [laughs] I tried everything, but after a while I recognized that a pole is really good, because I’m always running with poles uphill. I just used the pole and said the German word “run behind me.” In English, it means that.   So I used it and I put my hand to the back, and the pole was in the back, and then he had to have the distance between me and that. That’s really important because I’ll also be out a lot on skis in the winter, and there I also use it so that he is not coming too close to the skis. That works really well. I just can say that’s a good way to use the poles, and always try it so he’s a little bit away.   JEANETTE: When you’re out running in the mountains, sometimes you can meet some animals. Not all animals are just as nice. Cows, for example. How do you handle them?   ELISA: Cows. [laughs] I’m really afraid about cows because in Germany we have so many on the mountains. They’re all running free. Especially when they have small baby cows, then they start to get really angry if they see a dog. When I see cows, Finn is always on the leash. That’s super important. But I had one time a problem that a cow was too close, which was attacking me. Then I let him loose, of course, because otherwise we were both in trouble.   But another really good thing which helps is that cows are afraid of noises. I use my poles and throw them through the track or whatever, and if they hear a noise, they go away. That’s maybe a good point. But always be careful because if they have small cows and they see a dog, they’re not that friendly anymore. [laughs]   JEANETTE: Are there other challenges people might face when they’re running with a dog?   ELISA: I think there are always some challenges which you never know. For example, trees which fall on the track or other dogs. My dog is super happy with other dogs, but of course, it’s not always a good connection. And as I already said, you always have to think about two, so that’s also maybe a point. You have to think about it.   JEANETTE: And you also have nature. Things get stuck to your dog’s fur, or maybe insects as well? I don’t know, do you have experience on this?   ELISA: Yeah, that’s true. I had it. It was in Albania. Finn was laying a lot in the sand, and there had been some – I’m not sure how they’re called, but some super small horrible things. They were stuck everywhere in his fur, and we had to pull them out of his fur. He started to bleed and everything, so it was not that nice.   But I think all what happens, you get more and more prepared for everything that comes. It’s a good way to do it. [laughs] Or not a good way, but a way, and you learn about everything. That’s good.   JEANETTE: For the summer and the future, what are your plans?   ELISA: For this summer, we want to make some longer trips, Finn and me. For that, we have to prepare a little bit, go for longer hikes, and also prepare what to pack and how much food and how much water is there. I really love to be out with the dog. Being outside on the mountaintop is just amazing. Also, Finn really likes it. But for that, we have to train and have to think how much food, stuff like that. I just can say it’s amazing to be out with a dog, and maybe everyone should do it. Sleeping over on a mountaintop, stuff like that, and connect really more to your dog.   JEANETTE: What does it mean for you to have a dog on all these adventures? I guess it would be cool doing it by yourself, but having a dog, what extra joy does it give you?   ELISA: I think it’s so nice. I really like to be sometimes alone in the mountains, but with a dog, you’re never alone alone. That’s super nice because you never feel alone, and it’s just nice to have something and someone with you. We have made so many adventures and such nice memories, I can’t think – or if I think if I had done it without anyone or without my dog, it would not be the same. I’m really happy about it.   JEANETTE: Does it make you feel extra safe? Or is it like if I go camping with my dog and it’s dark and they start barking, maybe I would get a bit scared as well. [laughs]   ELISA: [laughs] Yeah, maybe. But I think it’s just nice to have him with me. Of course, if I’m sleeping outside, I know that he always will wake up if something happens. It’s not like I’m alone and whatever, a cow is coming. He feels earlier than I can feel something. Also when the weather is changing. He’s super afraid of thunderstorms, things like that, so he can hear it when I can’t see it already, so that’s also nice. It helps me also. So it’s not only that I have someone; he’s sometimes really helping me and showing me what to do. That’s nice.   JEANETTE: If there is a thunderstorm or something else happening and your dog gets scared, how do you handle it?   ELISA: That’s a big problem because nothing happened to him, and I don’t know why he’s so scared about it. But if he hears some crazy noises, he always wants to go away and search for holes and stuff like that. Sometimes when it’s a little bit too much – because I know it’s not that big, but he’s so afraid of it, so we search for a place where he feels okay. And I’m next to him, and that also brings him a lot. But that’s the only way I can do it, because I can’t run down the mountains in 10 minutes when rain is coming. [laughs] That’s not possible always. So searching for a place where he’s feeling safe.   JEANETTE: You do trips alone, and you also do competitions. What’s your favorite?   ELISA: I think both have something really nice. I like sometimes to compete. It’s nice to see how everything works for you and your dog. But of course, adventures are also so nice, and I like sometimes to stand there and have no time pressure and enjoy it. I think it’s important that you have a nice balance between both, and also it’s nice for my dog just to run free and not have to pull, and having an amazing life. So both sides have a good side.   JEANETTE: When you are out running, hiking, sometimes you meet other dogs as well. Do you have any tips?   ELISA: Oh yeah, I tried a lot out. It always depends on how your dog is, but I recognized my dog is feeling everything I feel. If I start to get nervous because I see a dog, he really feels it. For me and my dog, what works the best is stay there, do nothing and then go, and nothing ever happened. Everything is happy and friendly. But yeah, it always depends on your dog. I think it’s really important that you know that your dog is feeling what you’re doing and that there’s a nice balance between both sides.   JEANETTE: Would you ever consider having another dog? Or is it enough with one?   ELISA: Right now I’m still studying and I have to do a lot, so I’m happy with one. But sometimes I really can see that the Siberian husky like Finn, they really want to play always, and sometimes I feel he’s a little bit tired or sad because another dog is not there. So I go really often to dog beaches, stuff like that where dogs can play together, so he has contact with all the other dogs.   So I think that’s important, but right now I’m doing enough – I’m also a lot in the air with paragliding, and I want my dog to feel the best and not just stay at home. I think that’s important, if you have a dog or want to get a dog, that you have enough time and it’s not just “okay, I have a dog and it’s next to me.” It takes a lot of time, and it should take a lot of time, and you really should want the dog and want to spend all your free time / spare time with him. I’m thinking about it, and right now I have enough with one. [laughs] But you never know what’s next.   JEANETTE: If you and Finn had to do another activity, another kind of sport, what do you think that would be?   ELISA: That’s a good question. Right now I’m really dreaming of going paragliding together with Finn. [laughs]   JEANETTE: Wow, is that even possible?   ELISA: Yeah, it is. I have seen a lot of movies and talked to people which are doing it. But the problem is that Finn is – not heavy, but he is a Siberian husky, so he’s not a small dog. I have to prepare a lot for it. I think it would be really cool because we can go together on the mountain and then just fly down. But I think if this doesn’t work, we’re doing a lot of trail running and a lot of ski mountaineering in the winter, but not that much mountain biking stuff. So maybe that’s something we could try next.   JEANETTE: Good luck on all your adventures.   ELISA: Thank you so much.

JEANETTE: Nearly 40,000 people are following the adventures of today’s guest and her husky, Finn. They have traveled to eight countries together, and today she will share her best tips on trail running with her dog. Elisa Deutschmann from Germany, welcome. ELISA: Thank you, thank you. Nice to be here. JEANETTE: Yes, we’re very happy to have you here. You are an influencer? ELISA: Yeah, that’s right. JEANETTE: You and your dog, Finn. Can you tell us a bit more about yourselves? ELISA: My name is Elisa, as you already have heard. I’m living together with my husky, Finn, normally in Germany. I think for two years, I started to share all my photos and adventures which I and my dog are doing to Instagram. I uploaded pictures and videos about my life, about all the sports we are doing together, and yeah, it started to get more and more popular, and I think people like it and love to see what we’re doing. That’s why we’re always out and having fun. It’s nice to see that people get motivated about it. I think it’s nice. It’s a little bit more about how everything works with him, because it’s always important to do something together. JEANETTE: And you really are an outdoor person, and so is your dog. Can you tell us a bit more about Finn? ELISA: It’s my first dog ever. Before I got him, I knew I need a dog which was really robust so he can do everything I do and I don’t have to bring him warm jackets or so that he’s safe and ready for adventure. So I chose a Siberian husky. I got him when he was 8 weeks old, and now he’s already five and a half. We’ve made a lot of adventures together, and it works really well. So that was the point – that was when I said, okay, I need a Siberian husky. After five and a half years, I really know it was the right decision, and we’re a really good team together. I can’t think of a life without the dog. JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit about the adventures you’ve had so far? You’ve visited many countries and you have been on top of mountains, you have been running down mountains together, winter, summer, everything. ELISA: That’s true. I’m traveling a lot with my dog. To be honest, the first holidays or adventures, I was not that prepared how to do everything with a dog because it was my first dog. The first holidays we made were to some really hot countries like Albania and stuff like that. If I’m thinking right now about it, it was not that nice because it was way too hot. But I think that’s the way you learn and how you can prepare everything better for your next adventures. After all that experience, I focused my holidays more on like Norway, countries which are colder or whatever, Netherlands, things like that. Right now it works really well. I was before really into the mountain stuff, but through my dog I became more and more into it. As you may know, we started to get into trail running and all that kind of stuff. Of course, if you have a dog, I think your life changes a little bit. It’s not like you go to the Bahamas and make holidays there. After that, we’re doing a lot of that stuff, but for both, it’s our passion and we love to be in the mountains. It’s insane. JEANETTE: Do you have any advice if you plan to go to a totally different country with your dog? You don’t know how it is when it comes to temperature, where to go, where the nice trails are. How do you navigate when you do research before your trips? ELISA: After a while, I really know my dog really well and I know what fits him and what doesn’t. If we’re going to a really warm place because we have to go or something like that, then I know that my dog loves to swim. That’s a really good point, because I always can put him in the water and he can cool a little bit down. But if it’s maybe too hot, I always search for shadows and stuff like that. I think it’s really important that you know your dog really well. That’s how I prepare it, and I think we’re a really good team, so we can figure everything out together and everything works quite well. JEANETTE: When it comes to water, how do you do it when you’re on the mountaintop and there might be no lakes or small rivers, or you don’t have any extra water with you? ELISA: That’s a really good question. Normally when I know where to go and I know there are a lot of rivers and mountains, then it’s no problem for us drinking the water. But I already had it once where I was really far up in the mountain, and I expanded my trip. It was not that long a plan, but I said, “Okay, it’s fine. We will find some water.” Then we were at the top and I saw Finn needed some water and we had nothing. Then I just picked up my bottle and gave him all my water. I think it’s always important to have enough water for you, of course, but also more for your dog. It’s really important to think about it. But it was good that I still had some water. But normally, as I said, I always plan it, and when I know I’m going to areas which have no water, I bring – I’m not sure how they call these dog bottles, where you can fill them with water – and bring that for him. It works quite well. I also know how much he needs. Of course, it depends on the temperature, shadow, all this stuff. But that’s how we can figure it out. I always try to be a really good dog mom. [laughs] JEANETTE: When you go hiking and running, how do you prepare your dog for this? ELISA: I start to train a lot. For a month I did my first real race, trail run race, and for that we trained half a year or something like that. When it’s hot I always go out really early in the morning or really late so that the dog is not starting to get too hot. The last race was 22 kilometers and 1,200 meters high, so I know it’s a long way. We started with some shorter uphill runs, like 5k, stuff like that. It was really cold, but after a while, we also started to run more at lunchtime, stuff like that, because I knew the race would be at the same time. So I looked at when it is and that my dog feels really comfortable doing the race and it’s not something new. He was really used to the long distances and everything after the half year. I think that’s really important. It’s not like you take your dog and say “Okay, now we are going for a 20k run,” because he’s not known to that. It’s super important that you train your dog for that and that you do it step by step. Also, during the race, I made some breaks. He got some water, and I was always looking for him. That’s also not that easy because if you’re going for a race with a dog, it’s not only about you that you have to take care of. It’s also about your dog. When the race started, it was a little bit too warm, so the first 5k I was really afraid and took it super slow and had a look at him. But after a while it starts to rain, and then the temperature goes down. Then I also saw on him that he was really into it and feeling good. I think it’s important that you really have a good connection to your dog. It’s not only a dog, it’s my best friend, my everything, and I really can see when he’s doing well or when he’s doing not well, when he needs water, a break. That’s important, and that’s how I prepare everything for it. JEANETTE: What kind of equipment do you need for doing this? ELISA: I’m always using Freemotion harness for Finn because it fits him really, really well, and he’s been using it already for 4 years, so I know it works. I don’t change it so much because I think that it fits good is really important, that he can breathe and run really good. Then I’m using the running line, super simple, and the running belt. Everything is super light and comfortable, and that’s really important if you go for long, long trails. But he’s not always running on the leash, because when I’m up on the mountain and running down, it’s super important that he’s not pulling too much for me, because otherwise my knees or other stuff are destroyed after a while. So he has to run behind me. That’s also something which I trained really, really early with him. Because it’s a Siberian husky, it’s not like a border collie, which is doing everything you want. So we had to train a lot for it. After a while it worked, and now he’s running behind me and sometimes I put the leash away. JEANETTE: Can you tell us a bit more on how you trained him to walk behind you? Did you use a treat behind your back? What did you do? ELISA: It was quite hard at the beginning. I was not used to how to do it. [laughs] I tried everything, but after a while I recognized that a pole is really good, because I’m always running with poles uphill. I just used the pole and said the German word “run behind me.” In English, it means that. So I used it and I put my hand to the back, and the pole was in the back, and then he had to have the distance between me and that. That’s really important because I’ll also be out a lot on skis in the winter, and there I also use it so that he is not coming too close to the skis. That works really well. I just can say that’s a good way to use the poles, and always try it so he’s a little bit away. JEANETTE: When you’re out running in the mountains, sometimes you can meet some animals. Not all animals are just as nice. Cows, for example. How do you handle them? ELISA: Cows. [laughs] I’m really afraid about cows because in Germany we have so many on the mountains. They’re all running free. Especially when they have small baby cows, then they start to get really angry if they see a dog. When I see cows, Finn is always on the leash. That’s super important. But I had one time a problem that a cow was too close, which was attacking me. Then I let him loose, of course, because otherwise we were both in trouble. But another really good thing which helps is that cows are afraid of noises. I use my poles and throw them through the track or whatever, and if they hear a noise, they go away. That’s maybe a good point. But always be careful because if they have small cows and they see a dog, they’re not that friendly anymore. [laughs] JEANETTE: Are there other challenges people might face when they’re running with a dog? ELISA: I think there are always some challenges which you never know. For example, trees which fall on the track or other dogs. My dog is super happy with other dogs, but of course, it’s not always a good connection. And as I already said, you always have to think about two, so that’s also maybe a point. You have to think about it. JEANETTE: And you also have nature. Things get stuck to your dog’s fur, or maybe insects as well? I don’t know, do you have experience on this? ELISA: Yeah, that’s true. I had it. It was in Albania. Finn was laying a lot in the sand, and there had been some – I’m not sure how they’re called, but some super small horrible things. They were stuck everywhere in his fur, and we had to pull them out of his fur. He started to bleed and everything, so it was not that nice. But I think all what happens, you get more and more prepared for everything that comes. It’s a good way to do it. [laughs] Or not a good way, but a way, and you learn about everything. That’s good. JEANETTE: For the summer and the future, what are your plans? ELISA: For this summer, we want to make some longer trips, Finn and me. For that, we have to prepare a little bit, go for longer hikes, and also prepare what to pack and how much food and how much water is there. I really love to be out with the dog. Being outside on the mountaintop is just amazing. Also, Finn really likes it. But for that, we have to train and have to think how much food, stuff like that. I just can say it’s amazing to be out with a dog, and maybe everyone should do it. Sleeping over on a mountaintop, stuff like that, and connect really more to your dog. JEANETTE: What does it mean for you to have a dog on all these adventures? I guess it would be cool doing it by yourself, but having a dog, what extra joy does it give you? ELISA: I think it’s so nice. I really like to be sometimes alone in the mountains, but with a dog, you’re never alone alone. That’s super nice because you never feel alone, and it’s just nice to have something and someone with you. We have made so many adventures and such nice memories, I can’t think – or if I think if I had done it without anyone or without my dog, it would not be the same. I’m really happy about it. JEANETTE: Does it make you feel extra safe? Or is it like if I go camping with my dog and it’s dark and they start barking, maybe I would get a bit scared as well. [laughs] ELISA: [laughs] Yeah, maybe. But I think it’s just nice to have him with me. Of course, if I’m sleeping outside, I know that he always will wake up if something happens. It’s not like I’m alone and whatever, a cow is coming. He feels earlier than I can feel something. Also when the weather is changing. He’s super afraid of thunderstorms, things like that, so he can hear it when I can’t see it already, so that’s also nice. It helps me also. So it’s not only that I have someone; he’s sometimes really helping me and showing me what to do. That’s nice. JEANETTE: If there is a thunderstorm or something else happening and your dog gets scared, how do you handle it? ELISA: That’s a big problem because nothing happened to him, and I don’t know why he’s so scared about it. But if he hears some crazy noises, he always wants to go away and search for holes and stuff like that. Sometimes when it’s a little bit too much – because I know it’s not that big, but he’s so afraid of it, so we search for a place where he feels okay. And I’m next to him, and that also brings him a lot. But that’s the only way I can do it, because I can’t run down the mountains in 10 minutes when rain is coming. [laughs] That’s not possible always. So searching for a place where he’s feeling safe. JEANETTE: You do trips alone, and you also do competitions. What’s your favorite? ELISA: I think both have something really nice. I like sometimes to compete. It’s nice to see how everything works for you and your dog. But of course, adventures are also so nice, and I like sometimes to stand there and have no time pressure and enjoy it. I think it’s important that you have a nice balance between both, and also it’s nice for my dog just to run free and not have to pull, and having an amazing life. So both sides have a good side. JEANETTE: When you are out running, hiking, sometimes you meet other dogs as well. Do you have any tips? ELISA: Oh yeah, I tried a lot out. It always depends on how your dog is, but I recognized my dog is feeling everything I feel. If I start to get nervous because I see a dog, he really feels it. For me and my dog, what works the best is stay there, do nothing and then go, and nothing ever happened. Everything is happy and friendly. But yeah, it always depends on your dog. I think it’s really important that you know that your dog is feeling what you’re doing and that there’s a nice balance between both sides. JEANETTE: Would you ever consider having another dog? Or is it enough with one? ELISA: Right now I’m still studying and I have to do a lot, so I’m happy with one. But sometimes I really can see that the Siberian husky like Finn, they really want to play always, and sometimes I feel he’s a little bit tired or sad because another dog is not there. So I go really often to dog beaches, stuff like that where dogs can play together, so he has contact with all the other dogs. So I think that’s important, but right now I’m doing enough – I’m also a lot in the air with paragliding, and I want my dog to feel the best and not just stay at home. I think that’s important, if you have a dog or want to get a dog, that you have enough time and it’s not just “okay, I have a dog and it’s next to me.” It takes a lot of time, and it should take a lot of time, and you really should want the dog and want to spend all your free time / spare time with him. I’m thinking about it, and right now I have enough with one. [laughs] But you never know what’s next. JEANETTE: If you and Finn had to do another activity, another kind of sport, what do you think that would be? ELISA: That’s a good question. Right now I’m really dreaming of going paragliding together with Finn. [laughs] JEANETTE: Wow, is that even possible? ELISA: Yeah, it is. I have seen a lot of movies and talked to people which are doing it. But the problem is that Finn is – not heavy, but he is a Siberian husky, so he’s not a small dog. I have to prepare a lot for it. I think it would be really cool because we can go together on the mountain and then just fly down. But I think if this doesn’t work, we’re doing a lot of trail running and a lot of ski mountaineering in the winter, but not that much mountain biking stuff. So maybe that’s something we could try next. JEANETTE: Good luck on all your adventures. ELISA: Thank you so much.

03x02: Elisa Deutschmann | Trailrunning with dogs

Viktor Sinding-Larsen

JEANETTE: If you like biking, you will probably like this episode as well, as today’s guest is the World Champion, European Champions, and Norwegian Champion in bikejoring. He also competes in scooter and Nordic with skijoring, pulka, and 4-dog sled. Viktor Sinding Larsen, welcome.   VIKTOR: Thank you.   JEANETTE: You have achieved some impressive results throughout many years, so of course we want to know: how are you training yourself and your dogs? Now it’s offseason.   VIKTOR: It is. We just finished the winter season. Every year, we give the dogs an 8-week offseason period where we do other things, like not competition-specific training. We try to build up their strength, so we do some power training, a lot of core training. But in general, fewer hours than what we normally do. If some  of the dogs come out of the season with small injuries that we do not see, these 2 months normally will heal all kinds of small potential injuries so that when we start again in 2 months, we know that they’re ready for a new year of training and competition.   JEANETTE: How do you build your training throughout the rest of the year?   VIKTOR: When the offseason period is over, we start very, very light. Only short trainings, maybe 1-2 kilometers in the beginning. Then we build up. Normally when the weather gets colder, it’s possible to do longer trainings. We start 1-2 kilometers and we try to end when the dryland competition is getting closer. We build up so that we are on 9-10 kilometer trainings.   Then we prepare for the dryland competitions, and when the dryland competitions are done, we have a lack of time, trying to prepare for the winter season, trying to catch up. All the Nordic guys have been training huge amounts through the fall, so then we have to program the dogs for longer distances, train big amounts in November/December, preparing for competition.   JEANETTE: You divide your training into light, medium, and hard weeks. What’s the difference between these weeks?   VIKTOR: We try to have these light, medium, and hard weeks. In general we do a lot of pulling. In the light week, maybe two or three times of pulling. The main purpose of this week is to recover. The medium week is a bit harder, maybe three to four times a week pulling. Then we end up with the hard week, five to six times pulling, and we also try to combine it with some core training or just free running in the garden.   JEANETTE: You’re living in Oslo, and that’s a city where it could be hard to have your dogs free running, but you solve this by training them in many other different ways.   VIKTOR: Yes, that’s true. We live in Oslo, and it’s a little bit challenging to train as much free running as we might like to do for the capacity of the dogs. But I like swimming a lot. It’s a very good, gentle way of training both capacity and strength. So during summer, we try to swim as much as possible.   JEANETTE: Swimming is also a very gentle way to train the dogs to avoid injuries.   VIKTOR: It is. I always spend quite a lot of energy on avoiding injuries for our dogs. Especially when we got our first greysters, they were really, really good dogs, Siri and Sagan. Because they were such amazing dogs, it was very important for us to get them to the starting line without having any injuries. It was better to compromise a little bit on the capacity training and more focus on having them without any injuries. Therefore, we train a lot of power, core, swimming, and not that much free running as maybe others do.   Of course, we don’t get the same capacity, but a healthy dog normally has good enough capacity for bikejoring anyway. It’s more important that it is without any kind of injuries.   JEANETTE: At the European Championships this winter, you started with seven dogs. Every dog was healthy.   VIKTOR: Yeah. Even though it was a very challenging winter with a lot of ice and it was really hard to train, we managed to bring all our seven dogs without any kind of injuries to the starting line. That’s something I’m very, very proud of.   The brain behind keeping the dogs free of injuries is my wife. She’s a physical therapist for both humans and our dogs, and she’s very good at observing. She spends a lot of time looking for any kind of injuries, if they walk in special ways. She spends a lot of time observing the dogs to see if there is anything wrong. This also affects the way we train. We say we try to be better safe than sorry. If there’s any kind of risk involved in the plans we have or the conditions, etc., we try to drop it just to make sure that we avoid any injuries.   JEANETTE: Even if it’s competition?   VIKTOR: Yeah, even if it’s competition. I think this has changed a little bit. When we started racing and for many years, we were in the middle of the list. It was quite a gap to the best ones, especially on the Nordic part. Then the feeling was much stronger to come up with something a little bit fancier, involving a little bit more risk, to close this gap.   But when you continue training like this and try to build the gap in a fast way, it’s normally not possible. The coach of Karsten Warholm says that they build in millimeters, but things can be destroyed in meters, meaning you cannot do something fancy in one training, which means that you need continuity in your training. Every day you train, you become a little bit better. But if you do one mistake, you can ruin everything just in one training. So it’s better to take one step at a time, being careful, instead of having to risk ruining everything and putting you many steps back.   I think also it’s important to think about what’s going on besides training. We train maybe 1 or 2 hours a day, and the rest of the 22-23 hours, it’s important to be careful. Most injuries happen during that time.   JEANETTE: Do you train with both bike and scooter?   VIKTOR: I train 99% of the time on bike. I think with a bike, it’s much easier to find the right speed. You can help them upwards, and especially at the end of the training session, you can help them in a much better way to control and find the right speed that you want for the dogs. Especially where we live, it’s very hilly. It’s up and down. Especially at the end of the training when they’re a little bit weaker, it’s super nice to go on a bike, and you can help them find exactly the speed that you want.   JEANETTE: How do you know what speed is the right speed?   VIKTOR: In general, we train very, very slow downwards. I think this is very important for them to build up the trust for going slowly downwards so that the dogs have the feeling that they want to run faster. When you do that all the time, they really put themselves in a nice way into the harness. They really push downwards, and it’s like they want to go faster. So when competitions come and we pick the speed up, then it’s something they want.   When it’s going upwards, then we train very differently. Sometimes we want to do it heavy; sometimes we want to do it light. But by using a bike, you can adjust it just the way you want.   In general, I think we train very slow. I get many questions from people following me on Strava for example. They can follow each of our dog trainings, and they ask why we go so slow. I think for me, it’s important just to find a good rhythm where the dog is like flying in a comfortable speed.   If the goal for us is to reach, for example, 10K during this training, I try to find a speed, up, down, and on the flat, that will bring us to this 10K as easily as possible, a speed that they will roll or fly in the most efficient way. Then we have to brake downwards, trying not to have it too high on maximum speed, trying to find a good average speed, a good flow, so that we as efficiently as possible reach the kilometers that we want. By doing that, we can gain a lot of kilometers where the regeneration or restitution time is as low as possible.   My theory is that if I bring the speed up too much, the gain or the effect is very small, but they need much more time to regenerate and they don’t manage to run as many kilometers as if you find the right rhythm, the right flow, where they can fly away, gaining as many kilometers as possible.   JEANETTE: That theory seems to be correct because you’ve done quite well. [laughs]   VIKTOR: Yeah. It seems like this is working. I have many different dogs; they’re all running quite well.   JEANETTE: After a training session like this, how tired are the dogs?   VIKTOR: I always try to vary that as well, but in general I’m very fond of having short trainings. Very often, I end the training before they are very tired. By doing that quite often, they always want to push harder.   It’s a very important key in having the progression during the year. We start with just 1 or 2 kilometers, but I know the dogs can run two or three times as much. But by doing this many, many times, maybe five times a week, they will push harder and harder because they know, “This training is going to be short; I’ll spend as much energy as I can on these 3 kilometers.” By doing this, then we can slowly add one more and one more kilometer and still have a lot of power, building up towards 10K.   JEANETTE: Is it only in competition that you’re really pushing it to the maximum?   VIKTOR: Yeah. Only one time a year, I push 100%. I say that every competition or exercise is like putting money into the bank, and it’s only the European Championship or the World Championship where we go 100%. Even the Norwegian Championship or small competitions, I just do about 90-95%. I’m saving everything for the big championships because if you push your dog as hard as you can, even the strongest dog cannot do this very often.   That’s my theory. Maybe I’m a little bit soft, but I think that even such a short distance cannot take out money from the bank every time. You’ve got to save it. By doing this holding back a little bit all the time, I think I have much more money in the bank when the championship is coming that I can take out.   JEANETTE: During a competition, you are also working hard yourself. How much are you training yourself without the dogs?   VIKTOR: I train as much as I can. It’s a busy life now with plenty of dogs. They need a lot of training. But when I train the dogs, I don’t see this as an exercise myself. I put on warm clothes, and the dogs are doing the job.   I ride a bike almost every day. Two or three times I have an interval per week, and we’re also working with my coach on building up my leg power. I try to, especially during winter, have three power workouts with my legs. So I train as much as I can. The total load of dogs and the work and everything is quite high.   But in bike training, it’s also like as long as you reach a certain level, I think the dog gets very, very important. You need a super dog to win. You cannot win just with legs. I know that now I’m really lucky, having a super good bikejoring dog, and I have some young dogs that I think will be good as well. But without these super dogs, I have no chance.   That’s why we changed our focus a little bit during the years and now we have more dogs than we used to have, just to be a little bit less vulnerable, to make sure that when Siri, my super dog, is getting too old, I have some new dogs coming up. And of course, having four, five, six dogs in training takes a lot of energy. It affects my own cycling capacity, which I know can be improved a lot. But as long as I have one of those super dogs, I think my cycling capacity now is good enough.   JEANETTE: How do you see the difference between a good dog and this super dog?   VIKTOR: There are some super dogs that have a high speed, but there’s a lot of dogs with high speed at the moment. I think the super dogs also have stamina. They can just run and run. If the track is 4K, 5K, 6K, it doesn’t matter. They just keep on. That’s also the most amazing feeling, and maybe what motivates me. When you go for a race and you come towards the finish line and there’s still power and speed in front of you, this feeling is amazing.   JEANETTE: What do you focus on during a race?   VIKTOR: A bikejoring race is very tight. You need full speed from the beginning, and normally you don’t have to think much. Just full speed. But sometimes the track is longer. When it’s more than let’s say 5K, then you need to maybe start to think a little bit.   My goal during a race is always to have as high an average speed as possible, but as low maximum speed. I always compare my Strava race with my wife, just to see who has had the lowest maximum speed and the highest average speed. When it’s going downwards, this is where you can control the race.   If you’re nervous if your dog is going to manage to have full speed all the way to the finish line, this is where you can save energy, by using your brake. Don’t push the maximum speed as high as possible because every dog can run fast downward. It just makes it possible. But not all dogs can manage to the finish line if they are pushed too hard when going downwards. If you’re nervous, if you don’t know if you’ll manage all the way to the finish line, use the downwards to brake and save energy.   JEANETTE: Do you spend much time with the dogs besides the training itself?   VIKTOR: Yeah, I try to spend as much time as possible. When you train dryland, you don’t spend that many hours on training. That means that you have more time available for taking care of the dogs, and I think it’s very important that the dogs always feel well. It’s important for the dogs to have good images from training. That means that it has to be 100% in shape every time you take it out, which means that we try to spend much time making their paws perfect, cutting their nails – these very, very simple things that should always be perfect because if it’s not, it will just create negative images when they’re training.   And of course, my wife is super. She spends so much time every day going over the dogs, their muscles, and telling me if it’s ready for training the next day or not.   JEANETTE: You have several dogs at home, but how do you follow up with each individual?   VIKTOR: They are very different. They are different in size, they are different in age, even though they are from the same breeding. I try to give each one of them a individual program. They have different challenges, and they need to train different things.   In general, they follow the same easy, medium, and hard program, but the younger they are, the more careful I am. It depends also on what they are training for. If they’re training for bikejoring, if they’re training for skiing, which is much longer, they need more training. Then I can push a little bit harder for the long distance. But the young ones that are doing a shorter distance, then I’m more careful.   In general, I know that at the end of a hard week, they’re supposed to be a little bit tired, but I always look at how they performed on the last training and then I decide how they’re supposed to train this day. And at the end, my wife is feeling their muscles. She has the last word if they are going out for training or not.   JEANETTE: Do you follow a strict program during your trainings?   VIKTOR: No. Before each training, I have a plan – where we train, what we’re going to train– but it’s all based on feeling, what kinds of problems these dogs are having, and especially where we’re going to put our breaks, if we’re going to have many stops, and where we have them.   But in general I don’t follow a strict program. I take breaks where there’s water so that they can have a drink, and I always try to think of what’s coming next. If the dog had a problem on the uphill and I know we’re coming toward an uphill, maybe I have a break in front of this hill so that it’s fresh, and when we enter the uphill, it can do this with great confidence. Or if they have problems passing a lake, for example, we can have the break in front of that. I try to put the breaks just before they get tired. I don’t follow the clock.   JEANETTE: Do you use a different bike during training than you do in competitions?   VIKTOR: Yes. Now I have three different kinds of dog bikes: one steel bike that’s almost unbreakable that I use for everyday training – big tires and big disc brakes make it very comfortable. It can stop even if I have two dogs in front. If there are people, downhills, I can still stop easily. Then I have a competition bike that is always ready for racing, and a training bike for if I want to simulate competitions but I don’t want to use the competition bike.   Having many different bikes is very time-efficient. I just bring out the old one for normal training, and I know that the competition bike is always ready and in mint condition.   JEANETTE: If you had to put away your bike and do a different sport with your dogs – this is a question we ask everybody on this podcast – what sport would it be?   VIKTOR: I don’t know much about other kinds of dog sports, but I think maybe I would go for something like lure coursing. I like this idea of just having one dog and you put all your resources into the details for this one to run as fast as possible.   JEANETTE: Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.   VIKTOR: Thank you.

JEANETTE: If you like biking, you will probably like this episode as well, as today’s guest is the World Champion, European Champions, and Norwegian Champion in bikejoring. He also competes in scooter and Nordic with skijoring, pulka, and 4-dog sled. Viktor Sinding Larsen, welcome. VIKTOR: Thank you. JEANETTE: You have achieved some impressive results throughout many years, so of course we want to know: how are you training yourself and your dogs? Now it’s offseason. VIKTOR: It is. We just finished the winter season. Every year, we give the dogs an 8-week offseason period where we do other things, like not competition-specific training. We try to build up their strength, so we do some power training, a lot of core training. But in general, fewer hours than what we normally do. If some  of the dogs come out of the season with small injuries that we do not see, these 2 months normally will heal all kinds of small potential injuries so that when we start again in 2 months, we know that they’re ready for a new year of training and competition. JEANETTE: How do you build your training throughout the rest of the year? VIKTOR: When the offseason period is over, we start very, very light. Only short trainings, maybe 1-2 kilometers in the beginning. Then we build up. Normally when the weather gets colder, it’s possible to do longer trainings. We start 1-2 kilometers and we try to end when the dryland competition is getting closer. We build up so that we are on 9-10 kilometer trainings. Then we prepare for the dryland competitions, and when the dryland competitions are done, we have a lack of time, trying to prepare for the winter season, trying to catch up. All the Nordic guys have been training huge amounts through the fall, so then we have to program the dogs for longer distances, train big amounts in November/December, preparing for competition. JEANETTE: You divide your training into light, medium, and hard weeks. What’s the difference between these weeks? VIKTOR: We try to have these light, medium, and hard weeks. In general we do a lot of pulling. In the light week, maybe two or three times of pulling. The main purpose of this week is to recover. The medium week is a bit harder, maybe three to four times a week pulling. Then we end up with the hard week, five to six times pulling, and we also try to combine it with some core training or just free running in the garden. JEANETTE: You’re living in Oslo, and that’s a city where it could be hard to have your dogs free running, but you solve this by training them in many other different ways. VIKTOR: Yes, that’s true. We live in Oslo, and it’s a little bit challenging to train as much free running as we might like to do for the capacity of the dogs. But I like swimming a lot. It’s a very good, gentle way of training both capacity and strength. So during summer, we try to swim as much as possible. JEANETTE: Swimming is also a very gentle way to train the dogs to avoid injuries. VIKTOR: It is. I always spend quite a lot of energy on avoiding injuries for our dogs. Especially when we got our first greysters, they were really, really good dogs, Siri and Sagan. Because they were such amazing dogs, it was very important for us to get them to the starting line without having any injuries. It was better to compromise a little bit on the capacity training and more focus on having them without any injuries. Therefore, we train a lot of power, core, swimming, and not that much free running as maybe others do. Of course, we don’t get the same capacity, but a healthy dog normally has good enough capacity for bikejoring anyway. It’s more important that it is without any kind of injuries. JEANETTE: At the European Championships this winter, you started with seven dogs. Every dog was healthy. VIKTOR: Yeah. Even though it was a very challenging winter with a lot of ice and it was really hard to train, we managed to bring all our seven dogs without any kind of injuries to the starting line. That’s something I’m very, very proud of. The brain behind keeping the dogs free of injuries is my wife. She’s a physical therapist for both humans and our dogs, and she’s very good at observing. She spends a lot of time looking for any kind of injuries, if they walk in special ways. She spends a lot of time observing the dogs to see if there is anything wrong. This also affects the way we train. We say we try to be better safe than sorry. If there’s any kind of risk involved in the plans we have or the conditions, etc., we try to drop it just to make sure that we avoid any injuries. JEANETTE: Even if it’s competition? VIKTOR: Yeah, even if it’s competition. I think this has changed a little bit. When we started racing and for many years, we were in the middle of the list. It was quite a gap to the best ones, especially on the Nordic part. Then the feeling was much stronger to come up with something a little bit fancier, involving a little bit more risk, to close this gap. But when you continue training like this and try to build the gap in a fast way, it’s normally not possible. The coach of Karsten Warholm says that they build in millimeters, but things can be destroyed in meters, meaning you cannot do something fancy in one training, which means that you need continuity in your training. Every day you train, you become a little bit better. But if you do one mistake, you can ruin everything just in one training. So it’s better to take one step at a time, being careful, instead of having to risk ruining everything and putting you many steps back. I think also it’s important to think about what’s going on besides training. We train maybe 1 or 2 hours a day, and the rest of the 22-23 hours, it’s important to be careful. Most injuries happen during that time. JEANETTE: Do you train with both bike and scooter? VIKTOR: I train 99% of the time on bike. I think with a bike, it’s much easier to find the right speed. You can help them upwards, and especially at the end of the training session, you can help them in a much better way to control and find the right speed that you want for the dogs. Especially where we live, it’s very hilly. It’s up and down. Especially at the end of the training when they’re a little bit weaker, it’s super nice to go on a bike, and you can help them find exactly the speed that you want. JEANETTE: How do you know what speed is the right speed? VIKTOR: In general, we train very, very slow downwards. I think this is very important for them to build up the trust for going slowly downwards so that the dogs have the feeling that they want to run faster. When you do that all the time, they really put themselves in a nice way into the harness. They really push downwards, and it’s like they want to go faster. So when competitions come and we pick the speed up, then it’s something they want. When it’s going upwards, then we train very differently. Sometimes we want to do it heavy; sometimes we want to do it light. But by using a bike, you can adjust it just the way you want. In general, I think we train very slow. I get many questions from people following me on Strava for example. They can follow each of our dog trainings, and they ask why we go so slow. I think for me, it’s important just to find a good rhythm where the dog is like flying in a comfortable speed. If the goal for us is to reach, for example, 10K during this training, I try to find a speed, up, down, and on the flat, that will bring us to this 10K as easily as possible, a speed that they will roll or fly in the most efficient way. Then we have to brake downwards, trying not to have it too high on maximum speed, trying to find a good average speed, a good flow, so that we as efficiently as possible reach the kilometers that we want. By doing that, we can gain a lot of kilometers where the regeneration or restitution time is as low as possible. My theory is that if I bring the speed up too much, the gain or the effect is very small, but they need much more time to regenerate and they don’t manage to run as many kilometers as if you find the right rhythm, the right flow, where they can fly away, gaining as many kilometers as possible. JEANETTE: That theory seems to be correct because you’ve done quite well. [laughs] VIKTOR: Yeah. It seems like this is working. I have many different dogs; they’re all running quite well. JEANETTE: After a training session like this, how tired are the dogs? VIKTOR: I always try to vary that as well, but in general I’m very fond of having short trainings. Very often, I end the training before they are very tired. By doing that quite often, they always want to push harder. It’s a very important key in having the progression during the year. We start with just 1 or 2 kilometers, but I know the dogs can run two or three times as much. But by doing this many, many times, maybe five times a week, they will push harder and harder because they know, “This training is going to be short; I’ll spend as much energy as I can on these 3 kilometers.” By doing this, then we can slowly add one more and one more kilometer and still have a lot of power, building up towards 10K. JEANETTE: Is it only in competition that you’re really pushing it to the maximum? VIKTOR: Yeah. Only one time a year, I push 100%. I say that every competition or exercise is like putting money into the bank, and it’s only the European Championship or the World Championship where we go 100%. Even the Norwegian Championship or small competitions, I just do about 90-95%. I’m saving everything for the big championships because if you push your dog as hard as you can, even the strongest dog cannot do this very often. That’s my theory. Maybe I’m a little bit soft, but I think that even such a short distance cannot take out money from the bank every time. You’ve got to save it. By doing this holding back a little bit all the time, I think I have much more money in the bank when the championship is coming that I can take out. JEANETTE: During a competition, you are also working hard yourself. How much are you training yourself without the dogs? VIKTOR: I train as much as I can. It’s a busy life now with plenty of dogs. They need a lot of training. But when I train the dogs, I don’t see this as an exercise myself. I put on warm clothes, and the dogs are doing the job. I ride a bike almost every day. Two or three times I have an interval per week, and we’re also working with my coach on building up my leg power. I try to, especially during winter, have three power workouts with my legs. So I train as much as I can. The total load of dogs and the work and everything is quite high. But in bike training, it’s also like as long as you reach a certain level, I think the dog gets very, very important. You need a super dog to win. You cannot win just with legs. I know that now I’m really lucky, having a super good bikejoring dog, and I have some young dogs that I think will be good as well. But without these super dogs, I have no chance. That’s why we changed our focus a little bit during the years and now we have more dogs than we used to have, just to be a little bit less vulnerable, to make sure that when Siri, my super dog, is getting too old, I have some new dogs coming up. And of course, having four, five, six dogs in training takes a lot of energy. It affects my own cycling capacity, which I know can be improved a lot. But as long as I have one of those super dogs, I think my cycling capacity now is good enough. JEANETTE: How do you see the difference between a good dog and this super dog? VIKTOR: There are some super dogs that have a high speed, but there’s a lot of dogs with high speed at the moment. I think the super dogs also have stamina. They can just run and run. If the track is 4K, 5K, 6K, it doesn’t matter. They just keep on. That’s also the most amazing feeling, and maybe what motivates me. When you go for a race and you come towards the finish line and there’s still power and speed in front of you, this feeling is amazing. JEANETTE: What do you focus on during a race? VIKTOR: A bikejoring race is very tight. You need full speed from the beginning, and normally you don’t have to think much. Just full speed. But sometimes the track is longer. When it’s more than let’s say 5K, then you need to maybe start to think a little bit. My goal during a race is always to have as high an average speed as possible, but as low maximum speed. I always compare my Strava race with my wife, just to see who has had the lowest maximum speed and the highest average speed. When it’s going downwards, this is where you can control the race. If you’re nervous if your dog is going to manage to have full speed all the way to the finish line, this is where you can save energy, by using your brake. Don’t push the maximum speed as high as possible because every dog can run fast downward. It just makes it possible. But not all dogs can manage to the finish line if they are pushed too hard when going downwards. If you’re nervous, if you don’t know if you’ll manage all the way to the finish line, use the downwards to brake and save energy. JEANETTE: Do you spend much time with the dogs besides the training itself? VIKTOR: Yeah, I try to spend as much time as possible. When you train dryland, you don’t spend that many hours on training. That means that you have more time available for taking care of the dogs, and I think it’s very important that the dogs always feel well. It’s important for the dogs to have good images from training. That means that it has to be 100% in shape every time you take it out, which means that we try to spend much time making their paws perfect, cutting their nails – these very, very simple things that should always be perfect because if it’s not, it will just create negative images when they’re training. And of course, my wife is super. She spends so much time every day going over the dogs, their muscles, and telling me if it’s ready for training the next day or not. JEANETTE: You have several dogs at home, but how do you follow up with each individual? VIKTOR: They are very different. They are different in size, they are different in age, even though they are from the same breeding. I try to give each one of them a individual program. They have different challenges, and they need to train different things. In general, they follow the same easy, medium, and hard program, but the younger they are, the more careful I am. It depends also on what they are training for. If they’re training for bikejoring, if they’re training for skiing, which is much longer, they need more training. Then I can push a little bit harder for the long distance. But the young ones that are doing a shorter distance, then I’m more careful. In general, I know that at the end of a hard week, they’re supposed to be a little bit tired, but I always look at how they performed on the last training and then I decide how they’re supposed to train this day. And at the end, my wife is feeling their muscles. She has the last word if they are going out for training or not. JEANETTE: Do you follow a strict program during your trainings? VIKTOR: No. Before each training, I have a plan – where we train, what we’re going to train– but it’s all based on feeling, what kinds of problems these dogs are having, and especially where we’re going to put our breaks, if we’re going to have many stops, and where we have them. But in general I don’t follow a strict program. I take breaks where there’s water so that they can have a drink, and I always try to think of what’s coming next. If the dog had a problem on the uphill and I know we’re coming toward an uphill, maybe I have a break in front of this hill so that it’s fresh, and when we enter the uphill, it can do this with great confidence. Or if they have problems passing a lake, for example, we can have the break in front of that. I try to put the breaks just before they get tired. I don’t follow the clock. JEANETTE: Do you use a different bike during training than you do in competitions? VIKTOR: Yes. Now I have three different kinds of dog bikes: one steel bike that’s almost unbreakable that I use for everyday training – big tires and big disc brakes make it very comfortable. It can stop even if I have two dogs in front. If there are people, downhills, I can still stop easily. Then I have a competition bike that is always ready for racing, and a training bike for if I want to simulate competitions but I don’t want to use the competition bike. Having many different bikes is very time-efficient. I just bring out the old one for normal training, and I know that the competition bike is always ready and in mint condition. JEANETTE: If you had to put away your bike and do a different sport with your dogs – this is a question we ask everybody on this podcast – what sport would it be? VIKTOR: I don’t know much about other kinds of dog sports, but I think maybe I would go for something like lure coursing. I like this idea of just having one dog and you put all your resources into the details for this one to run as fast as possible. JEANETTE: Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. VIKTOR: Thank you.

03x01: Viktor Sinding-Larsen | How to train like a World champion in bikejoring 

JEANETTE: I see a lot of questions on social media about what distances a puppy can walk, when they can start pulling or carrying a backpack, or whether they should walk on stairs or not. Today’s guest has worked with physical therapy for 20 years, and she can help find answers to these questions. Line Østerhagen, welcome.   LINE: Thank you.   JEANETTE: Your goal is to make life better for dogs by spreading knowledge about how their bodies are working and how we can take care of them in the best way possible. Therefore, you have been working on a book for the past year.   LINE: Yes, during 20 years of work and contact with dog owners, I found out that many courses and many places where they teach normal dog training, they actually don’t teach training physiology. So there is a lot of myths and wrong information out there, and I wanted to create a book with all the things that I think are missing from all the ordinary courses and all the important knowledge to all the dog owners so they can take good care of the body of their dog.   My book is about training exercise, but also about making a well-balanced program for the dog, how to train strength, endurance, and core muscles, and also how to put all these training methods together. But it’s also about how to train a dog according to their age, because there are certain practices that you need to take care of when maybe you’re training a puppy or training a grown dog. But it’s also a little bit about rehabilitation, harness, and how to actually do an easy physical checkup routine for your own dog and a little bit of stretching and massage. I think my book can help a lot of dog owners out there.   JEANETTE: The beginning of the dog’s life is very important. As a puppy, how do you prepare it for an active life?   LINE: There are so many misunderstandings, so many myths. Many people say that you have to keep the puppy quiet, don’t do any physical activities, be careful about exaggerating their training. But actually, it’s more like if you don’t do any exercises with your puppy, it will not be prepared for the exercise it’s going to do later in life.   In the beginning, when a puppy is born, it is really important that we let the puppy experience a lot of different stuff and a lot of different stimulation to the body because the body will develop to manage the things that we tell it it has to manage. And if you don’t tell it to manage anything, the puppy might easily get injured.   Actually, in the United States, in the military, they start stimulating the puppies when they are 10 weeks old. They have had quite good results with that. I’m not saying that you should exaggerate. You shouldn’t do anything that the puppy doesn’t actually manage to do by itself. But the puppy has to be in activity. You are not going to stop the puppy from any normal activities. For example, walking on stairs. Puppies can easily walk on stairs. It’s actually just if the puppy is so small that it cannot manage the stairs that you might wait a little bit with it. But if you make small stairs, even a small puppy will manage to do that.   So when they’re old enough to manage it all by themselves, they can do anything. You shouldn’t stop the puppy from anything. But I recommend that you don’t have a tired puppy. If you’re walking, for example, in the woods, you should notice if the puppy is tired. Maybe you should take a break. But the puppy should be in activity.   Of course, as it grows, it should be in more and more activity, and you should present to it more and more different kinds of stuff.   JEANETTE: Does this include jumping, different surfaces, and everything?   LINE: Yes. Surfaces are really important to teach the body how to control itself on different surfaces. Also, of course, mentally so that a puppy is not afraid of anything. A body that is afraid of a surface will also have a very tense body, and a tense body will easily get injured. I believe there are many factors that make it important to present all kinds of stuff, actually.   JEANETTE: I know one question many have is: for how long can I walk my puppy?   LINE: I wrote a blog about this, the 5-minute rule. Here in Norway we have something called the 5-minute rule that says that the puppy should increase with 5 minutes of walking every day. Actually, that makes maybe a six-month-old puppy say that it should only walk for half an hour. As I have border collies, I can tell you that if I kept my puppy from walking or moving more than 30 minutes a day when she was six months old, she would go crazy. After a trip in the woods, she would run hours in the garden.   I think that the puppy must decide itself. As long as it’s not human-driven exercise, they should move as much as they want. And as long as you take breaks when you go into the woods, I believe it’s totally okay. I think it’s really different walking a small chihuahua to walking, for example, an Alaskan husky. You cannot use the 5-minute rule for both of those two. A chihuahua will walk maybe twice or three times as many steps as the other dog when they’re in the woods.   It also depends on how well-prepared their body is at that stage. If the puppy has been in normal activities since it was small, then it will also be able to walk further. But of course, if you keep a puppy from walking and then start later on, then you have to start more carefully because the body is not built up to manage that kind of exercise.   I would not let a puppy jump all the time as exercise, but normal jumping in the garden, jumping over trees in the woods and everything, of course they can do that. As long as they physically manage it by themselves, then they can do it.   JEANETTE: How do I know if my puppy is tired? What signs should I look for? If it’s my first dog, it could be difficult to know if the puppy is tired or not.   LINE: Yes. The most normal sign, of course, is that it maybe walks a little bit slower, wants to sit down. Maybe it doesn’t manage its movement as well anymore. But actually, a puppy can also be overtired and get even more active than it normally does. Of course, it’s important to learn this from the beginning and to know their signs before you go on a long trip. I would recommend all people get knowledge about this because every dog is a little bit different as well, so it is really important that you know your puppy.   JEANETTE: A lot of our listeners have sports dogs. Many of them are doing pulling sports like bike drawing or canicross. One important question for them is: when can the puppy start pulling, and how do you start?   LINE: We recommend that a young dog learns how to do everything with only its own body first. So they build up their muscles, they build up their movements in maybe their first and second year. At approximately two years of age, a young dog can start to pull something or carry a backpack. But of course, this is also relative because the dog has to be prepared for the work. It doesn’t matter if the dog is two years old if it just laid on the sofa for that long. It needs to be prepared for every work that it’s going to do. If it’s well-prepared, then about two years of age.   You have to remember that we have to carefully build their body up progressively from the beginning. Those rules, for example, in agility, it says that as long as the dog is approximately one year old, it can participate in training. But of course, the dog has to be prepared in their body, so it doesn’t help to be the right age if they have not done the right preparation.   Actually, I have a kickbike, and although my dog is one year old this year, one of my dogs, she is walking beside the kickbike. She has a harness on, but she doesn’t actually pull. But I teach her techniques and I teach her commands and I teach her to be safer on the kickbike and everything. She also goes on the trip, but without pulling.   So I believe it’s really important that we prepare the dogs. That is what it’s all about with a puppy as well because it’s really a big difference if the dog is maybe three months old until it’s a year. We have to very gradually increase the exercise. Also, when the dog is maybe about a year, maybe eight months – depends on what it’s going to do – I would also start to prepare it for the sport or the thing that we want it to do later in life so the body gets the right preparation.   JEANETTE: Do you start with easy weight and not very long sessions? How do you build it up?   LINE: Yes. Actually, many times I start with no weight or no pull. As I told you, with my puppy, she’s just joining the trip, learning the technique, but she’s not pulling. I have also with my own dogs started to make them comfortable with carrying the backpack without anything in it in the beginning. Then we start with a really easy weight. For normal training, I recommend that you use the body weight of the dog and train with approximately 10%.   I know that there are certain dogs doing a lot heavier than that, and for short trips and if it’s really well-trained for it, of course it can carry more. But for normal weekly training, we recommend that.   There are also some contraindications. For example, a dog with weak carpus, I would never make those carry a backpack. So you should really know what you’re doing when you’re putting external weight or pull on the dog, that your dog is capable in every way.   JEANETTE: Maybe get a checkup from the vet before you start training?   LINE: Yes, I believe that’s a good idea. Also maybe read about it. Get help to make a good training program so that the body will build itself up to the thing that you want your dog to do.   JEANETTE: What benefits can it have for a dog to pull or to carry a backpack?   LINE: I believe it has many benefits. We use pulling also for strengthening the side of the thighs. For example, if a dog needs to have more strength in their shoulder muscles, a backpack can be a good thing. But it depends a little bit on the way we train them. It depends a little bit on what the goal is. But if it is to get stronger in the body, it’s really great for building up certain parts of the body.   We also use the backpack in rehabilitation. There, the goal is not always to carry all of this weight, but to make a frame for the shoulders – for example, for dogs with shoulder instability, the backpack will actually help the shoulders to keep together so that the dog will build the right muscles. Then we might not use any weight at all.   JEANETTE: When we’re talking about rehabilitation, swimming is something that’s commonly used. It’s quite light on the body. When can a puppy start swimming?   LINE: Actually, a puppy can start swimming as soon as they’re swimming willingly. But of course, how far they swim and how much they swim – and I would also be careful of puppies swimming in very cold water because the body reduces warmth really fast in cold water. Swimming is not actually a good exercise for endurance when the water is cold because of the temperature loss of the muscles.   But puppies can swim from the beginning. Here in Norway, it’s possible to use indoor swimming pools when the puppy is small because there is ice on the water and it’s too cold. There are some breeds, of course, that swim less well. If you have one of those, they should wear a swimming vest, I think, just because it will make it easier and more comfortable from the beginning.   I also recommend using a life vest for dogs that have issues in their body and for dogs that are moving their front legs a lot when they swim because it makes them more comfortable, and then the technique will be a lot better and you will get more out of swimming as exercise.   JEANETTE: Is there anything else you can do or you should not do with a puppy?   LINE: I think that it’s important not to jump from really high places. It’s really normal to maybe lift the puppy up on the sofa, but we have to remember that the puppy was not able to get onto the sofa by itself, and then it’s also really important that it doesn’t jump down.   The body must be able to do the stuff that the puppy is doing, so if you are lifting them up, then you should also help them down and not let them jump from the sofa. The surface on the living room floor is also often very slippery, and then it will be a double risk having them jump down.   JEANETTE: We talked a little bit about age. With competitions, in some sports you can start when the dog is about a year or a year and a half old. What do you think about these age limits? Is that too early, or is it okay if the owner is experienced and knows how to prepare the dog?   LINE: For me personally, I would never recommend doing stuff faster than the dog’s body manages. Of course it’s nice to have limits because then we at least help younger animals not to exaggerate what their body can manage. But I think that how mature a body is is different. It’s different concerning breed and it’s different concerning how well-prepared they are. But of course, if people are really well-prepared and have done a good job without exaggerating, maybe it can be ready at that age.   But I always recommend that you make it individual, that you look at it individually so that we don’t start too early with a dog that is not mature enough in the body.   JEANETTE: Is there anything else we should know about puppies and training?   LINE: I think it’s really important to know that we have some myths out there that are saying that if you do exercise with your puppy or if it goes down stairs, they can actually develop hereditary diseases or develop mental diseases. I think that is a myth. Of course, everything that is exaggerating stuff for the body, no matter what you do, can be a bad thing. But normal movements, normal activities, you should never be afraid of that.   I think it’s really important to know that when the puppy is born, at the end of every bone in the body, there is cartilage. This cartilage will form as we are stimulating the body. If you don’t stimulate the body, this cartilage will not form normally, so it’s really important not to be afraid of letting the puppy do the stuff that they want to do. Just make sure that they are not tired. Just make sure that they are not pulling, that they are not carrying weight until the proper age. But just live a happy life. Let the puppy do what it likes to do.   JEANETTE: Another myth I know you have some strong opinions about is growing pains.   LINE: Yes. Unfortunately, people are using “growing pains” a little bit diffused. We have a disease in the skeleton that many people call “growing pains,” but it’s really important to remember that every puppy that shows lameness should go to the veterinarian. We should never use any excuses of any kind because it can be a more severe developmental disease. We should really take the lame puppy. If it’s lame for two minutes and then it disappears forever, it’s okay.   But as long as a puppy is lame, it should always be examined by a veterinarian. It’s really important. Some puppies are struggling for too long and then the prognosis will be really bad. They could have had a really good life if they’d just come to the veterinarian and got the right help earlier.   I believe that it’s really important to teach both new and maybe more experienced owners how to prepare their dog for each sport. The body needs different kinds of preparation concerning the sport it’s going to be a part of. My dream would be that every club that is offering courses, for example in agility, has an introduction course – not for jumping or anything, but really teaching the owners how to prepare the body to be able to do all the stuff that they are going to do later.   Very often, people start at training with dogs that are not prepared at all, and it really is one of the biggest triggers for injuries when the body is not well-prepared. So if any race club or training club would start doing these courses, like preparational courses for the sport that the dog is going to train, that would be so great.   Of course, the instructor needs to have experience with this, but in a perfect world, there would be instructors that can help people build the body up for what it needs to be built up for.   JEANETTE: You are doing some dog sports yourself. You’re doing a bit of obedience and you’re doing a bit of agility, and as you mentioned, you’re pulling a bit. You haven’t competed in that yet. But we have one question we ask everybody on this podcast, and that is: if you had to do another dog sport with your dog, what would it be?   LINE: I believe for me it would be nose work. I think that’s really fun to do. I hope that I get to train my – I have actually decided to attend a course now, so maybe I will find some mushrooms in the woods this year. [laughs]   JEANETTE: Good luck with that, and thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.   LINE: Thank you too.

JEANETTE: I see a lot of questions on social media about what distances a puppy can walk, when they can start pulling or carrying a backpack, or whether they should walk on stairs or not. Today’s guest has worked with physical therapy for 20 years, and she can help find answers to these questions. Line Østerhagen, welcome. LINE: Thank you. JEANETTE: Your goal is to make life better for dogs by spreading knowledge about how their bodies are working and how we can take care of them in the best way possible. Therefore, you have been working on a book for the past year. LINE: Yes, during 20 years of work and contact with dog owners, I found out that many courses and many places where they teach normal dog training, they actually don’t teach training physiology. So there is a lot of myths and wrong information out there, and I wanted to create a book with all the things that I think are missing from all the ordinary courses and all the important knowledge to all the dog owners so they can take good care of the body of their dog. My book is about training exercise, but also about making a well-balanced program for the dog, how to train strength, endurance, and core muscles, and also how to put all these training methods together. But it’s also about how to train a dog according to their age, because there are certain practices that you need to take care of when maybe you’re training a puppy or training a grown dog. But it’s also a little bit about rehabilitation, harness, and how to actually do an easy physical checkup routine for your own dog and a little bit of stretching and massage. I think my book can help a lot of dog owners out there. JEANETTE: The beginning of the dog’s life is very important. As a puppy, how do you prepare it for an active life? LINE: There are so many misunderstandings, so many myths. Many people say that you have to keep the puppy quiet, don’t do any physical activities, be careful about exaggerating their training. But actually, it’s more like if you don’t do any exercises with your puppy, it will not be prepared for the exercise it’s going to do later in life. In the beginning, when a puppy is born, it is really important that we let the puppy experience a lot of different stuff and a lot of different stimulation to the body because the body will develop to manage the things that we tell it it has to manage. And if you don’t tell it to manage anything, the puppy might easily get injured. Actually, in the United States, in the military, they start stimulating the puppies when they are 10 weeks old. They have had quite good results with that. I’m not saying that you should exaggerate. You shouldn’t do anything that the puppy doesn’t actually manage to do by itself. But the puppy has to be in activity. You are not going to stop the puppy from any normal activities. For example, walking on stairs. Puppies can easily walk on stairs. It’s actually just if the puppy is so small that it cannot manage the stairs that you might wait a little bit with it. But if you make small stairs, even a small puppy will manage to do that. So when they’re old enough to manage it all by themselves, they can do anything. You shouldn’t stop the puppy from anything. But I recommend that you don’t have a tired puppy. If you’re walking, for example, in the woods, you should notice if the puppy is tired. Maybe you should take a break. But the puppy should be in activity. Of course, as it grows, it should be in more and more activity, and you should present to it more and more different kinds of stuff. JEANETTE: Does this include jumping, different surfaces, and everything? LINE: Yes. Surfaces are really important to teach the body how to control itself on different surfaces. Also, of course, mentally so that a puppy is not afraid of anything. A body that is afraid of a surface will also have a very tense body, and a tense body will easily get injured. I believe there are many factors that make it important to present all kinds of stuff, actually. JEANETTE: I know one question many have is: for how long can I walk my puppy? LINE: I wrote a blog about this, the 5-minute rule. Here in Norway we have something called the 5-minute rule that says that the puppy should increase with 5 minutes of walking every day. Actually, that makes maybe a six-month-old puppy say that it should only walk for half an hour. As I have border collies, I can tell you that if I kept my puppy from walking or moving more than 30 minutes a day when she was six months old, she would go crazy. After a trip in the woods, she would run hours in the garden. I think that the puppy must decide itself. As long as it’s not human-driven exercise, they should move as much as they want. And as long as you take breaks when you go into the woods, I believe it’s totally okay. I think it’s really different walking a small chihuahua to walking, for example, an Alaskan husky. You cannot use the 5-minute rule for both of those two. A chihuahua will walk maybe twice or three times as many steps as the other dog when they’re in the woods. It also depends on how well-prepared their body is at that stage. If the puppy has been in normal activities since it was small, then it will also be able to walk further. But of course, if you keep a puppy from walking and then start later on, then you have to start more carefully because the body is not built up to manage that kind of exercise. I would not let a puppy jump all the time as exercise, but normal jumping in the garden, jumping over trees in the woods and everything, of course they can do that. As long as they physically manage it by themselves, then they can do it. JEANETTE: How do I know if my puppy is tired? What signs should I look for? If it’s my first dog, it could be difficult to know if the puppy is tired or not. LINE: Yes. The most normal sign, of course, is that it maybe walks a little bit slower, wants to sit down. Maybe it doesn’t manage its movement as well anymore. But actually, a puppy can also be overtired and get even more active than it normally does. Of course, it’s important to learn this from the beginning and to know their signs before you go on a long trip. I would recommend all people get knowledge about this because every dog is a little bit different as well, so it is really important that you know your puppy. JEANETTE: A lot of our listeners have sports dogs. Many of them are doing pulling sports like bike drawing or canicross. One important question for them is: when can the puppy start pulling, and how do you start? LINE: We recommend that a young dog learns how to do everything with only its own body first. So they build up their muscles, they build up their movements in maybe their first and second year. At approximately two years of age, a young dog can start to pull something or carry a backpack. But of course, this is also relative because the dog has to be prepared for the work. It doesn’t matter if the dog is two years old if it just laid on the sofa for that long. It needs to be prepared for every work that it’s going to do. If it’s well-prepared, then about two years of age. You have to remember that we have to carefully build their body up progressively from the beginning. Those rules, for example, in agility, it says that as long as the dog is approximately one year old, it can participate in training. But of course, the dog has to be prepared in their body, so it doesn’t help to be the right age if they have not done the right preparation. Actually, I have a kickbike, and although my dog is one year old this year, one of my dogs, she is walking beside the kickbike. She has a harness on, but she doesn’t actually pull. But I teach her techniques and I teach her commands and I teach her to be safer on the kickbike and everything. She also goes on the trip, but without pulling. So I believe it’s really important that we prepare the dogs. That is what it’s all about with a puppy as well because it’s really a big difference if the dog is maybe three months old until it’s a year. We have to very gradually increase the exercise. Also, when the dog is maybe about a year, maybe eight months – depends on what it’s going to do – I would also start to prepare it for the sport or the thing that we want it to do later in life so the body gets the right preparation. JEANETTE: Do you start with easy weight and not very long sessions? How do you build it up? LINE: Yes. Actually, many times I start with no weight or no pull. As I told you, with my puppy, she’s just joining the trip, learning the technique, but she’s not pulling. I have also with my own dogs started to make them comfortable with carrying the backpack without anything in it in the beginning. Then we start with a really easy weight. For normal training, I recommend that you use the body weight of the dog and train with approximately 10%. I know that there are certain dogs doing a lot heavier than that, and for short trips and if it’s really well-trained for it, of course it can carry more. But for normal weekly training, we recommend that. There are also some contraindications. For example, a dog with weak carpus, I would never make those carry a backpack. So you should really know what you’re doing when you’re putting external weight or pull on the dog, that your dog is capable in every way. JEANETTE: Maybe get a checkup from the vet before you start training? LINE: Yes, I believe that’s a good idea. Also maybe read about it. Get help to make a good training program so that the body will build itself up to the thing that you want your dog to do. JEANETTE: What benefits can it have for a dog to pull or to carry a backpack? LINE: I believe it has many benefits. We use pulling also for strengthening the side of the thighs. For example, if a dog needs to have more strength in their shoulder muscles, a backpack can be a good thing. But it depends a little bit on the way we train them. It depends a little bit on what the goal is. But if it is to get stronger in the body, it’s really great for building up certain parts of the body. We also use the backpack in rehabilitation. There, the goal is not always to carry all of this weight, but to make a frame for the shoulders – for example, for dogs with shoulder instability, the backpack will actually help the shoulders to keep together so that the dog will build the right muscles. Then we might not use any weight at all. JEANETTE: When we’re talking about rehabilitation, swimming is something that’s commonly used. It’s quite light on the body. When can a puppy start swimming? LINE: Actually, a puppy can start swimming as soon as they’re swimming willingly. But of course, how far they swim and how much they swim – and I would also be careful of puppies swimming in very cold water because the body reduces warmth really fast in cold water. Swimming is not actually a good exercise for endurance when the water is cold because of the temperature loss of the muscles. But puppies can swim from the beginning. Here in Norway, it’s possible to use indoor swimming pools when the puppy is small because there is ice on the water and it’s too cold. There are some breeds, of course, that swim less well. If you have one of those, they should wear a swimming vest, I think, just because it will make it easier and more comfortable from the beginning. I also recommend using a life vest for dogs that have issues in their body and for dogs that are moving their front legs a lot when they swim because it makes them more comfortable, and then the technique will be a lot better and you will get more out of swimming as exercise. JEANETTE: Is there anything else you can do or you should not do with a puppy? LINE: I think that it’s important not to jump from really high places. It’s really normal to maybe lift the puppy up on the sofa, but we have to remember that the puppy was not able to get onto the sofa by itself, and then it’s also really important that it doesn’t jump down. The body must be able to do the stuff that the puppy is doing, so if you are lifting them up, then you should also help them down and not let them jump from the sofa. The surface on the living room floor is also often very slippery, and then it will be a double risk having them jump down. JEANETTE: We talked a little bit about age. With competitions, in some sports you can start when the dog is about a year or a year and a half old. What do you think about these age limits? Is that too early, or is it okay if the owner is experienced and knows how to prepare the dog? LINE: For me personally, I would never recommend doing stuff faster than the dog’s body manages. Of course it’s nice to have limits because then we at least help younger animals not to exaggerate what their body can manage. But I think that how mature a body is is different. It’s different concerning breed and it’s different concerning how well-prepared they are. But of course, if people are really well-prepared and have done a good job without exaggerating, maybe it can be ready at that age. But I always recommend that you make it individual, that you look at it individually so that we don’t start too early with a dog that is not mature enough in the body. JEANETTE: Is there anything else we should know about puppies and training? LINE: I think it’s really important to know that we have some myths out there that are saying that if you do exercise with your puppy or if it goes down stairs, they can actually develop hereditary diseases or develop mental diseases. I think that is a myth. Of course, everything that is exaggerating stuff for the body, no matter what you do, can be a bad thing. But normal movements, normal activities, you should never be afraid of that. I think it’s really important to know that when the puppy is born, at the end of every bone in the body, there is cartilage. This cartilage will form as we are stimulating the body. If you don’t stimulate the body, this cartilage will not form normally, so it’s really important not to be afraid of letting the puppy do the stuff that they want to do. Just make sure that they are not tired. Just make sure that they are not pulling, that they are not carrying weight until the proper age. But just live a happy life. Let the puppy do what it likes to do. JEANETTE: Another myth I know you have some strong opinions about is growing pains. LINE: Yes. Unfortunately, people are using “growing pains” a little bit diffused. We have a disease in the skeleton that many people call “growing pains,” but it’s really important to remember that every puppy that shows lameness should go to the veterinarian. We should never use any excuses of any kind because it can be a more severe developmental disease. We should really take the lame puppy. If it’s lame for two minutes and then it disappears forever, it’s okay. But as long as a puppy is lame, it should always be examined by a veterinarian. It’s really important. Some puppies are struggling for too long and then the prognosis will be really bad. They could have had a really good life if they’d just come to the veterinarian and got the right help earlier. I believe that it’s really important to teach both new and maybe more experienced owners how to prepare their dog for each sport. The body needs different kinds of preparation concerning the sport it’s going to be a part of. My dream would be that every club that is offering courses, for example in agility, has an introduction course – not for jumping or anything, but really teaching the owners how to prepare the body to be able to do all the stuff that they are going to do later. Very often, people start at training with dogs that are not prepared at all, and it really is one of the biggest triggers for injuries when the body is not well-prepared. So if any race club or training club would start doing these courses, like preparational courses for the sport that the dog is going to train, that would be so great. Of course, the instructor needs to have experience with this, but in a perfect world, there would be instructors that can help people build the body up for what it needs to be built up for. JEANETTE: You are doing some dog sports yourself. You’re doing a bit of obedience and you’re doing a bit of agility, and as you mentioned, you’re pulling a bit. You haven’t competed in that yet. But we have one question we ask everybody on this podcast, and that is: if you had to do another dog sport with your dog, what would it be? LINE: I believe for me it would be nose work. I think that’s really fun to do. I hope that I get to train my – I have actually decided to attend a course now, so maybe I will find some mushrooms in the woods this year. [laughs] JEANETTE: Good luck with that, and thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. LINE: Thank you too.

02x06: Line Østerhagen | How much should I exercise my puppy? | SEASON FINALE

Steve Walsh

02x05: Steve Walsh | Q&A with a dog trainer

Ben Robinson

02x04: Ben Robinson | How to train like the fastest canicross duo on Earth

Einar Bjørndalen

JEANETTE: These days are putting our mental strength to the test. We need some motivation and inspiration. Today’s guest might be able to help with that. Through 25 years at the top of his sport, the “King of Biathlon” has impressed the world with his abilities to handle challenges and pressure. Ole Einar Bjørndalen won 13 medals in the Olympics, 45 medals in World Championships, and had 95 individual World Cup wins before he retired a couple of years ago. One incident in particular at the very start of his career set a standard. OLE EINAR: That was quite many years ago. It was in 1998 in Japan, in Nagano. I was very well-prepared for this competition. It was a 10 kilometer sprint. The race went really well. Around 2 kilometers before the finish, they cancelled this race because it was too much wind and too much bad weather, so they felt it was not a fair competition. I was in the lead. I got a message from my staff people. They said I was 15 seconds in front, so that was my first gold medal, I thought. But as you remember, directly before I finished, they cancelled the race. I got really angry up in the mountain there and smashed my skis and poles on the track, for sure. But then I understood that this race was not finished after a few minutes. I needed to come back to the stadium. So I skied slowly down to the stadium again, and then I saw a lot of media and journalists and I knew exactly what they would ask me about. I thought, “Why should I speak to them? This race is not finished. I used 4 years for this competition; I don’t want to miss this competition again.” So I went straight forward, didn’t speak with anyone, no media, nothing, because I had no reason because the race was not finished. I would make this race finished before I spoke with anyone. Then I went into my wax cabin, and in my wax cabin, my waxer was sitting in a corner there and he was more sad than me. He was sitting and crying because he lost also one gold medal. I remember the words I said to him. “I have fantastic skis these days,” and I said, “Thank you for the skis. Make the skis the same tomorrow, because it was really great.” Then I took the bus down to the hotel. I needed to think about the next day. For sure I was feeling a bit sad, but I went to the hotel, took some food, and then I called my mental coach. This mental coach, Øyvind Hammer, I’d worked with him since two years before. We went through this competition the day before this race, and for sure I had to call him and explain what had happened. He took the phone and he was a little bit different coach than others, because he was not interested in biathlons. He was more interested in what I am doing. I’m not sure if he was looking at this competition because he had a big business and he worked like hell, so I’m not sure if he looked at this on TV. His first question was, “How was the race?” I explained it. “Skiing was fantastic. First round was also good. I shot four, and on the last shot I missed one and I put my rifle – but still I went in front because I was fast skier this time. Shot clean standing, so everything was good.” Then I explained they stopped the race. Then it was quiet a little bit from him, and he said to me, “You’re quite lucky that you have a chance to make this race again, because we had an agreement yesterday” – because he prepared every race an agreement. I prepared on the paper, I wrote everything down what I had to do, and I signed it. When you sign the paper, then you need to hold what you write on the paper. This time I didn’t hold my prone shooting. I was not on the place. I had the rifle on my back before I shot the last shot, almost. So he said to me, “We’ll do exactly the same preparation for the next race the day after, and you should do a single shot, prone, single shot standing, and don’t leave the stadium before you have done this job because you did not do this job before.” I did that. I made my best race ever, shoot 10 from 10 and win more than 1 minute. I didn’t speak with anyone, almost, because it was in Japan. I didn’t speak with any media. I was focused on myself. I had the right person around me and not people who were sorry about that happening. That is really a challenge when you make a bad race, because everyone is sorry to you. You don’t need that because you have a chance to wake up again and make the race better than what you have done before. JEANETTE: But how do you protect yourself from negative energy? Because it’s all around. OLE EINAR: It’s all around, but you don’t need to meet them. Go around. For sure, you’d be shorter in the dinner, shorter in all – because the main point is the meal. All others, you stay in the room and I go running in the evening, so I don’t see any people. You need to be in your vacuum and think about yourself, especially when there’s a championship like that. Then you’re a little bit shy from people. JEANETTE: But everybody wants a piece of you. Is it difficult to stay in your bubble? OLE EINAR: For me, it’s normal. You need to give a lot for the media and people, but you need to give that with that you get energy. If you lose energy – which is really easy to do when you are a good athlete because everyone wants a piece of you – the moment you start to lose energy, you need to stop. Then you need to explain it to people around you, if you have somebody who can help you with that to inform, or you inform them yourself to say that you need time for yourself. I think that is important when you are in a challenging time. If not, there’s only one man who loses, and that is yourself. So you need to take control about your time, your balance in your life. Competition is to stay focused – everyone stays enough focused on the sport, I think. The problem is they don’t take control of their life. If you don’t have balance in the rest of your life, you have no chance to make a good race. When I started to work with mental coaches, my colleagues worked 90% with the sport and 10% with the private. I do the opposite. I work 90% with my life and 10% with sport. JEANETTE: Why did you decide to start with the mental training? Was it normal at that time to do it, or was it something new? OLE EINAR: Today, it’s totally normal. In 1996, it was definitely not normal. This man, Øyvind Hammer, he doesn’t get any chance to come to our hotel. All coaches don’t like him. He was dressed in a suit and coming with different cars than usual normal people. He had no experience in sport. He thought different, and always when people are different, they feel threatening to people, so they get always afraid. It happened also this time, but he definitely was the most important guy for me to come through, to be World champion the first time and definitely my Olympic gold the first time. When you make it one time, it’s much easier to make it again. JEANETTE: What was the biggest difference you could notice before you started doing mental training and after? OLE EINAR: As you’re a professional in your sport, you know plenty enough about the sport. Different what I did, I put everything in a system. When I should think in the right way after each other, because you know plenty about everything. You don’t need to have more information, but you need to make a system. That was a big difference. Plus I fixed my private life. JEANETTE: Do you do some kind of mental training every day? Or did you do it only before competitions or championships? OLE EINAR: I did it every day. Sometimes I did a lot, other times I did not so much. But you can definitely be overtrained in that. I did that too. It’s easy to get overtraining mental training because you need to have balance in everything. Physical training, mental training, private life, and then you have a chance to make a good race. JEANETTE: When it comes to the sport you have been doing, biathlon, it’s much like agility, for example. If you miss the target, you get a penalty. That’s precisely what happens when our dogs knock a bar, for instance. When something like this happens, it’s easy to lose focus, but you are really good at fighting till the end. What were you telling yourself in these situations? OLE EINAR: First of all, you should never give up. I’m training the Chinese team now, and that is the first rule. Never give up. That is first. Second is the mental stability. You have happiness, you have depression, and you have aggression. Many emotional things can happen with you. If there’s some sport that you’re doing shooting or like with animals, you need to have balance in your life. If you are more stable yourself, I think your animals or your stuff around you will also be more stable. So you should not go too high and not too low. When you have a good result, you should be a little bit calmer, and when you have a bad result, you should not go to hell, too low. If you have a bad result, my rule is 30 minutes you can be in a bad mood, but after that it doesn’t help anything. I think it’s also really important to be analytical, not so much emotional. Analytic, how I can fix it, stay positive, and fix it and use energy in the right way. JEANETTE: Your mental strength also shows in competitions where you are really pushing yourself to the limit of what’s physically possible. How did you use your mind to work through all the pain? OLE EINAR: It’s quite a long time since I made a really hard competition. If I make competition today, it’s painful, but when I was a professional it was not painful because I trained every second day. So that was more a habit. I was prepared for that. I can maybe remember one race was painful, many, many years ago. But really pain – when you’re in bad shape, you remember pain, but when you’re in normal shape, you have so many things you need to think about and techniques you need to think about, everything. I was quite professional. I was quite prepared for what I had to do, so I didn’t think that was pain. It pushed me a lot, but really it will be a little bit same as when you brush your teeth. You have to do it. For me, it was fun. I live for my sport and I do it every day, and that was my life. JEANETTE: Through 25 years in the national team, you have done a lot of competitions. Some were big, some were not that big. But have you ever been nervous? OLE EINAR: Well, I was really nervous for a small race in Norway. Some relays in the World Cup I could be nervous for. In the first years, for sure, I was really nervous. I could not sleep the whole night until I started to be good at mental preparation. When I started to be good at mental preparation, then I did all nervousness the day before and then I was calm for the race. The Olympics, I was less nervous for all races because I had trained for this race 4 years. That was like to brush teeth again. I only had to do the job. Everything had to be okay with all the equipment. You need to stay fit, right weight, right food. Your health had to be working well. So there’s many things you need to fix, but nervous, I was not so in an important race. JEANETTE: What differs the best athletes from the second best? OLE EINAR: For sure, you need to have extreme talent. If you don’t have talent to be in the national team, you have no chance. If you’re on the national team, I think you’re good enough to be quite good to win medals. But to be constantly on the top, there’s really few people who have this quality. There’s something with talent, but also about mental – not health, but mental strength that you can handle success, handle bad races. You need to do not always the right choice, but you need to do 95% the right choice. You need to stay healthy. If you are not healthy – I made 25 years World Championship. I was healthy in each World Championship. That is quite good. You cannot stay unhealthy. If you are sick, you lose too much to your opponent. JEANETTE: How did you manage to stay healthy all the time? OLE EINAR: You can get bacteria, you can get virus from a lot of people. I get that also. Everyone gets that. Then you need to handle it and fight against it with your immune system. Sometimes you have it; some other times you do not have this immune system and you need to use something to be able to cope. But most of the time, if you’re mentally tired from mentally negative stress, that is the worst case and you can have bacteria and virus. That’s my opinion. It’s not proven, but I say that each time I get sick is because I am mentally tired from mentally negative stress. From huge working stress or huge hours of training, I never get sick and I get overtrained about that. It’s more about balance in your life. If you have a lot of negative people around you and mentally negative stress, then you can get everything if you want. JEANETTE: How important is it to have a good team around you that’s giving you that energy instead of draining you? OLE EINAR: This is about this 90%, what I spoke about before. You have no chance to do all this job alone. You need a crazy strong team. You need really smart people around you and you need to fix them. If they’re not so good, you need to make them good. I don’t want to say a name, but one of the best coaches in Norway came to us many years ago. He was educated from the Norwegian sports university and was okay, but when he left the job, he was in the highest level ever. He got good from the athletes, not from other coaches. Athletes can make the coach great. You need to make people around you really good. If not, you have no chance because our sport is a little bit like business. You can survive in business, but in sport, you are on the podium or you are – not a loser, but you are – JEANETTE: You’re just out. OLE EINAR: You take part in the race. But in Norway it’s a really high level of what is acceptable from results. It’s really heavy to be top level at Norway because everyone has to win if you start for Norway. JEANETTE: You made a comeback as a 40-year-old in Sochi, and then people said you were too old to do this now, but you still won the gold medal. How did it feel to prove them wrong? OLE EINAR: That was more about the media. The closest people, they trust me. As I said before, I worked crazy hard with this 90% in this period because I had some challenges and also some back problems. A lot of my health was not good. Then the year before the Olympics in Sochi, I was good. I was really well-prepared. And then I was back in my best age. For sure I don’t recover as fast as before, but I can make some good races, and it was attitude. I was really well-prepared for these races. So it’s been fantastic. I’m really happy for that. It’s my second most important race in my life. The first Nagano race, and these were maybe the two best races I ever did in my life. JEANETTE: One of the reasons why you succeeded might have been that you dare to do things differently. How did you find the right way, and was it ever difficult to make your own path? OLE EINAR: It’s not so difficult if you like a sport, if you want to develop yourself. Before the first time I won, I was afraid to win, because what should I do when I win the race? Because then you are the world’s best; what is next? But the first victory I got, then you saw so many other specs about the sport. You saw many other ways to develop yourself, your team, and everything. I was at my best when I won races because I work much harder when I win races. I did it opposite. I worked crazy hard when I won races, and when I was bad, I didn’t work so hard because then I needed to rest. So when I won races, I was crazy afraid to make a bad race after, so I worked really hard. JEANETTE: That brings us to a topic that many have some questions about. You’ve been doing this for so many years, and being a top athlete is hard work. It’s basically like training, eating, resting all the time. How did you stay motivated through all these years? OLE EINAR: I love my sport. Nothing else. Of course, you love what you do. It was heavy to stop my sport, but life goes on and I’ve got a family. That’s the only reason why I stopped my sport. If not, I will guaranteed continue, one more Olympics. JEANETTE: Could you tell us a bit more about what you’re doing now? You are a coach? OLE EINAR: Now I’m a coach for the Chinese team. I felt I think I have the best job I can get. It’s really interesting to develop such kind of athletes who are motivated. The nation are crazy motivated. They are willing to train hard. So I am a little bit back in the game. I feel not so tired because I can work a lot. I am motivated too. From outside, it’s totally unrealistic, what they wish to do in two and a half years, but I think it’s possible. But we’ll see. It’s a really hard job. JEANETTE: A nice challenge. OLE EINAR: Yeah, it’s maybe one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever had before in my – to win the first victory in World Championships or Olympics is a hard challenge, but to the next one, what I’m doing now is much harder. JEANETTE: One question we ask everybody on this podcast is if you had to do another sport with your dog, what would it be? You don’t do any dog sports right now, so the question for you could be: if you had to do a sport with a dog, what would it be? Would it be skijoring? I know you’ve tried it before. OLE EINAR: Ski touring is okay. No, I think I will do mountain biking. Professional mountain biking. I like that. I think I could have some talent for it. JEANETTE: Thank you so much for taking the time to join us on this podcast. OLE EINAR: You’re welcome.

JEANETTE: These days are putting our mental strength to the test. We need some motivation and inspiration. Today’s guest might be able to help with that. Through 25 years at the top of his sport, the “King of Biathlon” has impressed the world with his abilities to handle challenges and pressure. Ole Einar Bjørndalen won 13 medals in the Olympics, 45 medals in World Championships, and had 95 individual World Cup wins before he retired a couple of years ago. One incident in particular at the very start of his career set a standard. OLE EINAR: That was quite many years ago. It was in 1998 in Japan, in Nagano. I was very well-prepared for this competition. It was a 10 kilometer sprint. The race went really well. Around 2 kilometers before the finish, they cancelled this race because it was too much wind and too much bad weather, so they felt it was not a fair competition. I was in the lead. I got a message from my staff people. They said I was 15 seconds in front, so that was my first gold medal, I thought. But as you remember, directly before I finished, they cancelled the race. I got really angry up in the mountain there and smashed my skis and poles on the track, for sure. But then I understood that this race was not finished after a few minutes. I needed to come back to the stadium. So I skied slowly down to the stadium again, and then I saw a lot of media and journalists and I knew exactly what they would ask me about. I thought, “Why should I speak to them? This race is not finished. I used 4 years for this competition; I don’t want to miss this competition again.” So I went straight forward, didn’t speak with anyone, no media, nothing, because I had no reason because the race was not finished. I would make this race finished before I spoke with anyone. Then I went into my wax cabin, and in my wax cabin, my waxer was sitting in a corner there and he was more sad than me. He was sitting and crying because he lost also one gold medal. I remember the words I said to him. “I have fantastic skis these days,” and I said, “Thank you for the skis. Make the skis the same tomorrow, because it was really great.” Then I took the bus down to the hotel. I needed to think about the next day. For sure I was feeling a bit sad, but I went to the hotel, took some food, and then I called my mental coach. This mental coach, Øyvind Hammer, I’d worked with him since two years before. We went through this competition the day before this race, and for sure I had to call him and explain what had happened. He took the phone and he was a little bit different coach than others, because he was not interested in biathlons. He was more interested in what I am doing. I’m not sure if he was looking at this competition because he had a big business and he worked like hell, so I’m not sure if he looked at this on TV. His first question was, “How was the race?” I explained it. “Skiing was fantastic. First round was also good. I shot four, and on the last shot I missed one and I put my rifle – but still I went in front because I was fast skier this time. Shot clean standing, so everything was good.” Then I explained they stopped the race. Then it was quiet a little bit from him, and he said to me, “You’re quite lucky that you have a chance to make this race again, because we had an agreement yesterday” – because he prepared every race an agreement. I prepared on the paper, I wrote everything down what I had to do, and I signed it. When you sign the paper, then you need to hold what you write on the paper. This time I didn’t hold my prone shooting. I was not on the place. I had the rifle on my back before I shot the last shot, almost. So he said to me, “We’ll do exactly the same preparation for the next race the day after, and you should do a single shot, prone, single shot standing, and don’t leave the stadium before you have done this job because you did not do this job before.” I did that. I made my best race ever, shoot 10 from 10 and win more than 1 minute. I didn’t speak with anyone, almost, because it was in Japan. I didn’t speak with any media. I was focused on myself. I had the right person around me and not people who were sorry about that happening. That is really a challenge when you make a bad race, because everyone is sorry to you. You don’t need that because you have a chance to wake up again and make the race better than what you have done before. JEANETTE: But how do you protect yourself from negative energy? Because it’s all around. OLE EINAR: It’s all around, but you don’t need to meet them. Go around. For sure, you’d be shorter in the dinner, shorter in all – because the main point is the meal. All others, you stay in the room and I go running in the evening, so I don’t see any people. You need to be in your vacuum and think about yourself, especially when there’s a championship like that. Then you’re a little bit shy from people. JEANETTE: But everybody wants a piece of you. Is it difficult to stay in your bubble? OLE EINAR: For me, it’s normal. You need to give a lot for the media and people, but you need to give that with that you get energy. If you lose energy – which is really easy to do when you are a good athlete because everyone wants a piece of you – the moment you start to lose energy, you need to stop. Then you need to explain it to people around you, if you have somebody who can help you with that to inform, or you inform them yourself to say that you need time for yourself. I think that is important when you are in a challenging time. If not, there’s only one man who loses, and that is yourself. So you need to take control about your time, your balance in your life. Competition is to stay focused – everyone stays enough focused on the sport, I think. The problem is they don’t take control of their life. If you don’t have balance in the rest of your life, you have no chance to make a good race. When I started to work with mental coaches, my colleagues worked 90% with the sport and 10% with the private. I do the opposite. I work 90% with my life and 10% with sport. JEANETTE: Why did you decide to start with the mental training? Was it normal at that time to do it, or was it something new? OLE EINAR: Today, it’s totally normal. In 1996, it was definitely not normal. This man, Øyvind Hammer, he doesn’t get any chance to come to our hotel. All coaches don’t like him. He was dressed in a suit and coming with different cars than usual normal people. He had no experience in sport. He thought different, and always when people are different, they feel threatening to people, so they get always afraid. It happened also this time, but he definitely was the most important guy for me to come through, to be World champion the first time and definitely my Olympic gold the first time. When you make it one time, it’s much easier to make it again. JEANETTE: What was the biggest difference you could notice before you started doing mental training and after? OLE EINAR: As you’re a professional in your sport, you know plenty enough about the sport. Different what I did, I put everything in a system. When I should think in the right way after each other, because you know plenty about everything. You don’t need to have more information, but you need to make a system. That was a big difference. Plus I fixed my private life. JEANETTE: Do you do some kind of mental training every day? Or did you do it only before competitions or championships? OLE EINAR: I did it every day. Sometimes I did a lot, other times I did not so much. But you can definitely be overtrained in that. I did that too. It’s easy to get overtraining mental training because you need to have balance in everything. Physical training, mental training, private life, and then you have a chance to make a good race. JEANETTE: When it comes to the sport you have been doing, biathlon, it’s much like agility, for example. If you miss the target, you get a penalty. That’s precisely what happens when our dogs knock a bar, for instance. When something like this happens, it’s easy to lose focus, but you are really good at fighting till the end. What were you telling yourself in these situations? OLE EINAR: First of all, you should never give up. I’m training the Chinese team now, and that is the first rule. Never give up. That is first. Second is the mental stability. You have happiness, you have depression, and you have aggression. Many emotional things can happen with you. If there’s some sport that you’re doing shooting or like with animals, you need to have balance in your life. If you are more stable yourself, I think your animals or your stuff around you will also be more stable. So you should not go too high and not too low. When you have a good result, you should be a little bit calmer, and when you have a bad result, you should not go to hell, too low. If you have a bad result, my rule is 30 minutes you can be in a bad mood, but after that it doesn’t help anything. I think it’s also really important to be analytical, not so much emotional. Analytic, how I can fix it, stay positive, and fix it and use energy in the right way. JEANETTE: Your mental strength also shows in competitions where you are really pushing yourself to the limit of what’s physically possible. How did you use your mind to work through all the pain? OLE EINAR: It’s quite a long time since I made a really hard competition. If I make competition today, it’s painful, but when I was a professional it was not painful because I trained every second day. So that was more a habit. I was prepared for that. I can maybe remember one race was painful, many, many years ago. But really pain – when you’re in bad shape, you remember pain, but when you’re in normal shape, you have so many things you need to think about and techniques you need to think about, everything. I was quite professional. I was quite prepared for what I had to do, so I didn’t think that was pain. It pushed me a lot, but really it will be a little bit same as when you brush your teeth. You have to do it. For me, it was fun. I live for my sport and I do it every day, and that was my life. JEANETTE: Through 25 years in the national team, you have done a lot of competitions. Some were big, some were not that big. But have you ever been nervous? OLE EINAR: Well, I was really nervous for a small race in Norway. Some relays in the World Cup I could be nervous for. In the first years, for sure, I was really nervous. I could not sleep the whole night until I started to be good at mental preparation. When I started to be good at mental preparation, then I did all nervousness the day before and then I was calm for the race. The Olympics, I was less nervous for all races because I had trained for this race 4 years. That was like to brush teeth again. I only had to do the job. Everything had to be okay with all the equipment. You need to stay fit, right weight, right food. Your health had to be working well. So there’s many things you need to fix, but nervous, I was not so in an important race. JEANETTE: What differs the best athletes from the second best? OLE EINAR: For sure, you need to have extreme talent. If you don’t have talent to be in the national team, you have no chance. If you’re on the national team, I think you’re good enough to be quite good to win medals. But to be constantly on the top, there’s really few people who have this quality. There’s something with talent, but also about mental – not health, but mental strength that you can handle success, handle bad races. You need to do not always the right choice, but you need to do 95% the right choice. You need to stay healthy. If you are not healthy – I made 25 years World Championship. I was healthy in each World Championship. That is quite good. You cannot stay unhealthy. If you are sick, you lose too much to your opponent. JEANETTE: How did you manage to stay healthy all the time? OLE EINAR: You can get bacteria, you can get virus from a lot of people. I get that also. Everyone gets that. Then you need to handle it and fight against it with your immune system. Sometimes you have it; some other times you do not have this immune system and you need to use something to be able to cope. But most of the time, if you’re mentally tired from mentally negative stress, that is the worst case and you can have bacteria and virus. That’s my opinion. It’s not proven, but I say that each time I get sick is because I am mentally tired from mentally negative stress. From huge working stress or huge hours of training, I never get sick and I get overtrained about that. It’s more about balance in your life. If you have a lot of negative people around you and mentally negative stress, then you can get everything if you want. JEANETTE: How important is it to have a good team around you that’s giving you that energy instead of draining you? OLE EINAR: This is about this 90%, what I spoke about before. You have no chance to do all this job alone. You need a crazy strong team. You need really smart people around you and you need to fix them. If they’re not so good, you need to make them good. I don’t want to say a name, but one of the best coaches in Norway came to us many years ago. He was educated from the Norwegian sports university and was okay, but when he left the job, he was in the highest level ever. He got good from the athletes, not from other coaches. Athletes can make the coach great. You need to make people around you really good. If not, you have no chance because our sport is a little bit like business. You can survive in business, but in sport, you are on the podium or you are – not a loser, but you are – JEANETTE: You’re just out. OLE EINAR: You take part in the race. But in Norway it’s a really high level of what is acceptable from results. It’s really heavy to be top level at Norway because everyone has to win if you start for Norway. JEANETTE: You made a comeback as a 40-year-old in Sochi, and then people said you were too old to do this now, but you still won the gold medal. How did it feel to prove them wrong? OLE EINAR: That was more about the media. The closest people, they trust me. As I said before, I worked crazy hard with this 90% in this period because I had some challenges and also some back problems. A lot of my health was not good. Then the year before the Olympics in Sochi, I was good. I was really well-prepared. And then I was back in my best age. For sure I don’t recover as fast as before, but I can make some good races, and it was attitude. I was really well-prepared for these races. So it’s been fantastic. I’m really happy for that. It’s my second most important race in my life. The first Nagano race, and these were maybe the two best races I ever did in my life. JEANETTE: One of the reasons why you succeeded might have been that you dare to do things differently. How did you find the right way, and was it ever difficult to make your own path? OLE EINAR: It’s not so difficult if you like a sport, if you want to develop yourself. Before the first time I won, I was afraid to win, because what should I do when I win the race? Because then you are the world’s best; what is next? But the first victory I got, then you saw so many other specs about the sport. You saw many other ways to develop yourself, your team, and everything. I was at my best when I won races because I work much harder when I win races. I did it opposite. I worked crazy hard when I won races, and when I was bad, I didn’t work so hard because then I needed to rest. So when I won races, I was crazy afraid to make a bad race after, so I worked really hard. JEANETTE: That brings us to a topic that many have some questions about. You’ve been doing this for so many years, and being a top athlete is hard work. It’s basically like training, eating, resting all the time. How did you stay motivated through all these years? OLE EINAR: I love my sport. Nothing else. Of course, you love what you do. It was heavy to stop my sport, but life goes on and I’ve got a family. That’s the only reason why I stopped my sport. If not, I will guaranteed continue, one more Olympics. JEANETTE: Could you tell us a bit more about what you’re doing now? You are a coach? OLE EINAR: Now I’m a coach for the Chinese team. I felt I think I have the best job I can get. It’s really interesting to develop such kind of athletes who are motivated. The nation are crazy motivated. They are willing to train hard. So I am a little bit back in the game. I feel not so tired because I can work a lot. I am motivated too. From outside, it’s totally unrealistic, what they wish to do in two and a half years, but I think it’s possible. But we’ll see. It’s a really hard job. JEANETTE: A nice challenge. OLE EINAR: Yeah, it’s maybe one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever had before in my – to win the first victory in World Championships or Olympics is a hard challenge, but to the next one, what I’m doing now is much harder. JEANETTE: One question we ask everybody on this podcast is if you had to do another sport with your dog, what would it be? You don’t do any dog sports right now, so the question for you could be: if you had to do a sport with a dog, what would it be? Would it be skijoring? I know you’ve tried it before. OLE EINAR: Ski touring is okay. No, I think I will do mountain biking. Professional mountain biking. I like that. I think I could have some talent for it. JEANETTE: Thank you so much for taking the time to join us on this podcast. OLE EINAR: You’re welcome.

02x03: Ole Einar Bjørndalen | Mental training secrets of an Olympic athlete

JEANETTE: Ski mountaineering with a dog is getting more and more popular, and one of the influencers you can see doing this is Elisa Deutschmann from Germany and her husky, Finn. Welcome.   ELISA: Thank you. Nice to be here.   JEANETTE: You get a lot of questions about ski mountaineering with dogs. First of all, what equipment do you need for yourself and your dog?   ELISA: Finn and me are always out in the mountains, and it’s quite important that the dog use the right equipment to go out there. For that, I use the Freemotion Harness. I’ve used it now since 6 years, when I started to ski with my dog. I also use the running line because I think it’s super nice, and it has a flexible part in it. I always attach the line to my backpack so he’s not pulling that hard, the flexible part, and it’s nice for my back. These two are I think the most important things I use for Finn, and he feels really good in it.   JEANETTE: A question I guess you get a lot is, what kind of skis do you use when ski mountaineering with a dog? Because you see these horrible pictures of steel edges causing some bad injuries.   ELISA: Yeah, it’s true. I still use normal ski mountaineering skis, but I trained with Finn from the very beginning when we were going down that he’s always 5 meters away from my skis. It’s really important that you don’t crash into it. I think that’s a point which you have to train really in the beginning, and I did it. I ski up with my dog, and Finn is normally always on the leash in front. Sometimes if it’s a nice area, he’s loose.   When we are up on the top, then he gets unleashed, and then I say the training word. It’s called “hinter”. Then he knows he has to go behind me. Then we start to ski. If you want to train with your dog so that he’s not going into your skis, I always use my ski poles. I put them in the back and I always make sure he’s far away. Of course, I look that I don’t touch him and that everything is fine. I think that’s a nice way that he gets used to it.   JEANETTE: So you put some effort into this in the beginning so that he learns from the start that this is how it works.   ELISA: Yeah. That’s super important that he knows the basics. When you ski up, it’s important that he not push one time like crazy and then he’s loose, so it’s nice that he always goes the same speed. If you go ski touring, you also have “spitzkehren”, It’s the crossing points when the hill is getting really steep. He also has to get used to that. I trained it with him before. On the normal ground, I make stops and then I say what he has to do. Train with your dog, because otherwise you can get in trouble on the mountain.   JEANETTE: What dangers are there when you’re bringing a dog to the mountain?   ELISA: I think there are so many points. Of course, first, it’s amazing to bring your best partner to the mountain and to share this experience. But I think you have to be really good and think about avalanches. That’s a really good point, that you go up first. Before I brought Finn to all my ski mountaineering stuff, I trained a lot on avalanche risks. I’m really used to all the mountains, all the snow conditions. After that I brought Finn. Because he has no avalanche thing with him, so it’s really important that he’s safe. I think I’m a good skier, and I always look around and he’s safe. That’s important. So a lot of things.   And of course, weather conditions. And then it depends on which dog you have. I have a Siberian husky and he is really used to rough conditions. It doesn’t matter if a snowstorm is coming or not. He doesn’t need any booties for his paws, so he does really well. But if you have a different breed like a chihuahua or anything, any dog can go on a mountain, but it’s important that you know your dog really well and that you also bring the right equipment for him.   JEANETTE: But Finn doesn’t need a jacket, I guess.   ELISA: No, he’s super warm and he doesn’t care about anything. [laughs] When I wear three jackets, he’s still happy and enjoys the snow and the cold weather conditions.   JEANETTE: Is the heavy snow ever any trouble to you?   ELISA: I only had once that he stopped walking in the mountains because we had like one and a half meters of powder, and he was over his nose in the snow, so it was crazy. But I think all the other times, he was always fine and doing well. But I think that’s the thing I already said: you have to know your dog really good, and I think then it works with every dog.   JEANETTE: How do you know that he’s doing okay or if you should break a bit more?   ELISA: As I said, I know Finn really good. When I ski down, for example, I always make breaks. Of course I would love to ski the whole way, or if it’s nice powder, to ski the whole way down, but you always have to think about your dog. It’s like if you would run the whole way down the whole mountain, so it’s crazy. So I made every 200 meters a stop, and he has to wait and has to breathe, and then we go for the next. It’s important, but for that you also have to know your dog.   JEANETTE: When you’re going down, do you have your dog on the leash, or is he running free?   ELISA: He’s running free. I think for me, it’s a safe way to go because I don’t like to go with the leash down. But as I said, he always runs behind me and 5-10 meters away from me so that nothing happens. If I know the area, I also let him run in front of me, but it depends where I am and how everything is.   JEANETTE: Why don’t you want him to run in front of you?   ELISA: He’s a Siberian husky, so sometimes it happens that he sees something and then he runs away. [laughs] It’s quite important for me that I always know where he is. Normally he’s not running away, but you never know, and I don’t want to search for him for hours, so that’s why. [laughs]   JEANETTE: Do you see many others with dogs in the mountains?   ELISA: I think in Germany, it became more and more, but I think a lot of people don’t know how to handle it and how to do it and which equipment to use. So I think it gets more and more. I would love to see more dogs up in the mountains because I think it’s so nice to share this experience with your dog.   JEANETTE: As far as I know, you’re going to have some seminars about this topic.   ELISA: Yeah, that’s true. As I said, I get a lot of questions about how to do this, and to explain it is fine, but I think it’s better to show people how to do it. I think it’s nice to meet so many people who are also loving their dog and want to go out ski mountaineering. That’s why I did these ski mountaineering camps, and I think it’s really cool and the people get to know it. There are so many people who have a dog and also would like to go out in nature, but don’t know how to handle it. That’s nice, and I think it’s nice that there are so many people out there that want to do some activities with their dog.   JEANETTE: What’s your best memory from doing this with Finn?   ELISA: The best memory is – I’ve had Finn now for 6 years, and we’ve made a million nice memories. But right now, last week I had been to Dachstein, the glacier in Austria. It was a tough expedition. We made like 64 kilometers and 14,600 meters high, and I was not sure if I could make it and also if Finn could make it because I had last year an accident with my leg and it’s still not good.   We had really rough conditions. The first day was a crazy storm, ice, and I could not see anything, and Finn I think also. We still kept on walking. The second day was really good, but the last part of Dachstein is you have to climb up, and I could not bring Finn up there. So I had to leash him down on the rock and he had to wait there. It was a crazy, horrible feeling for me because I heard Finn when I was on the top. He was crying because of where I am.   But skiing down on the second day, there was a really rough, crazy storm up in the mountains with snow. But both Finn and me were working so good together, so it was really nice. I think right now this is one of the nicest experiences I did.   JEANETTE: For next year, you have a lot of other plans as well, and you’ll include Finn in this?   ELISA: Yeah. Not only next year, I think also in the spring I want to do paragliding with Finn together. I dream that we’ll ski up with the skis and then I’ll bring a paraglider and fly together with him down. That’s something I really want to do. But to do paragliding is also not that easy, and also with a dog, so we have to train a lot. But I think there’s a lot of fun expeditions and other stuff awaiting me and Finn and it’s very nice.   JEANETTE: You’re really pushing the limits of both of you.   ELISA: Yeah. I don’t want to do anything without Finn because it’s horrible for me when he has to stay at home and I’m in the mountains. Before, we did everything together, like skiing, climbing. Also, he’s climbing a little bit, so it’s super nice. But the point of flying, dogs are not able to do it normally, so that’s a thing I really want to do with him. But we’ll have to train a lot for him before I really take him out in the air. I already bought a harness for him which fits for flying, and we will see how we will do it.   JEANETTE: So people are actually flying with their dogs, even the big ones, already?   ELISA: Yeah, there are some people out there who are flying. But a husky is not really small, so we really have to see how it will work. Finn is always, when he’s with me, he’s super chill and doing well, so I think he will also do it. But we will only do it if he really enjoys it. I will not push him.   JEANETTE: What does it mean for you to bring your dog to all these activities?   ELISA: For me, Finn is not only a dog; he’s my partner in crime, you can say. He’s always with me, and we’re a really good team. It’s really nice for me to bring him, and it’s also really good for me that he’s doing everything so well still, because he turned 6, so he’s not that young. He’s in a really good age and he’s still so eager to run and so happy, so it’s so nice to bring him everywhere.   JEANETTE: There is one question we ask everybody on this podcast, and that is: if you had to do another sport or activity with your dog, what would it be? You and Finn are doing almost everything, but is there something else you would like to try?   ELISA: I think we already did everything together. He’s been paddleboarding with me, he’s running, driving in the car for hours with me. [laughs] There’s nothing he doesn’t like. I think the flying thing is something I would love to do with him.   JEANETTE: You will also be back for another episode in the summer about trail running with a dog, and I guess when you start flying, you’ll have to come back and talk about that as well.   ELISA: Yeah, of course, and I can share all the experience I have with you about flying with a dog. [laughs]   JEANETTE: Super. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast.   ELISA: Thank you. It was super cool.

JEANETTE: Ski mountaineering with a dog is getting more and more popular, and one of the influencers you can see doing this is Elisa Deutschmann from Germany and her husky, Finn. Welcome. ELISA: Thank you. Nice to be here. JEANETTE: You get a lot of questions about ski mountaineering with dogs. First of all, what equipment do you need for yourself and your dog? ELISA: Finn and me are always out in the mountains, and it’s quite important that the dog use the right equipment to go out there. For that, I use the Freemotion Harness. I’ve used it now since 6 years, when I started to ski with my dog. I also use the running line because I think it’s super nice, and it has a flexible part in it. I always attach the line to my backpack so he’s not pulling that hard, the flexible part, and it’s nice for my back. These two are I think the most important things I use for Finn, and he feels really good in it. JEANETTE: A question I guess you get a lot is, what kind of skis do you use when ski mountaineering with a dog? Because you see these horrible pictures of steel edges causing some bad injuries. ELISA: Yeah, it’s true. I still use normal ski mountaineering skis, but I trained with Finn from the very beginning when we were going down that he’s always 5 meters away from my skis. It’s really important that you don’t crash into it. I think that’s a point which you have to train really in the beginning, and I did it. I ski up with my dog, and Finn is normally always on the leash in front. Sometimes if it’s a nice area, he’s loose. When we are up on the top, then he gets unleashed, and then I say the training word. It’s called “hinter”. Then he knows he has to go behind me. Then we start to ski. If you want to train with your dog so that he’s not going into your skis, I always use my ski poles. I put them in the back and I always make sure he’s far away. Of course, I look that I don’t touch him and that everything is fine. I think that’s a nice way that he gets used to it. JEANETTE: So you put some effort into this in the beginning so that he learns from the start that this is how it works. ELISA: Yeah. That’s super important that he knows the basics. When you ski up, it’s important that he not push one time like crazy and then he’s loose, so it’s nice that he always goes the same speed. If you go ski touring, you also have “spitzkehren”, It’s the crossing points when the hill is getting really steep. He also has to get used to that. I trained it with him before. On the normal ground, I make stops and then I say what he has to do. Train with your dog, because otherwise you can get in trouble on the mountain. JEANETTE: What dangers are there when you’re bringing a dog to the mountain? ELISA: I think there are so many points. Of course, first, it’s amazing to bring your best partner to the mountain and to share this experience. But I think you have to be really good and think about avalanches. That’s a really good point, that you go up first. Before I brought Finn to all my ski mountaineering stuff, I trained a lot on avalanche risks. I’m really used to all the mountains, all the snow conditions. After that I brought Finn. Because he has no avalanche thing with him, so it’s really important that he’s safe. I think I’m a good skier, and I always look around and he’s safe. That’s important. So a lot of things. And of course, weather conditions. And then it depends on which dog you have. I have a Siberian husky and he is really used to rough conditions. It doesn’t matter if a snowstorm is coming or not. He doesn’t need any booties for his paws, so he does really well. But if you have a different breed like a chihuahua or anything, any dog can go on a mountain, but it’s important that you know your dog really well and that you also bring the right equipment for him. JEANETTE: But Finn doesn’t need a jacket, I guess. ELISA: No, he’s super warm and he doesn’t care about anything. [laughs] When I wear three jackets, he’s still happy and enjoys the snow and the cold weather conditions. JEANETTE: Is the heavy snow ever any trouble to you? ELISA: I only had once that he stopped walking in the mountains because we had like one and a half meters of powder, and he was over his nose in the snow, so it was crazy. But I think all the other times, he was always fine and doing well. But I think that’s the thing I already said: you have to know your dog really good, and I think then it works with every dog. JEANETTE: How do you know that he’s doing okay or if you should break a bit more? ELISA: As I said, I know Finn really good. When I ski down, for example, I always make breaks. Of course I would love to ski the whole way, or if it’s nice powder, to ski the whole way down, but you always have to think about your dog. It’s like if you would run the whole way down the whole mountain, so it’s crazy. So I made every 200 meters a stop, and he has to wait and has to breathe, and then we go for the next. It’s important, but for that you also have to know your dog. JEANETTE: When you’re going down, do you have your dog on the leash, or is he running free? ELISA: He’s running free. I think for me, it’s a safe way to go because I don’t like to go with the leash down. But as I said, he always runs behind me and 5-10 meters away from me so that nothing happens. If I know the area, I also let him run in front of me, but it depends where I am and how everything is. JEANETTE: Why don’t you want him to run in front of you? ELISA: He’s a Siberian husky, so sometimes it happens that he sees something and then he runs away. [laughs] It’s quite important for me that I always know where he is. Normally he’s not running away, but you never know, and I don’t want to search for him for hours, so that’s why. [laughs] JEANETTE: Do you see many others with dogs in the mountains? ELISA: I think in Germany, it became more and more, but I think a lot of people don’t know how to handle it and how to do it and which equipment to use. So I think it gets more and more. I would love to see more dogs up in the mountains because I think it’s so nice to share this experience with your dog. JEANETTE: As far as I know, you’re going to have some seminars about this topic. ELISA: Yeah, that’s true. As I said, I get a lot of questions about how to do this, and to explain it is fine, but I think it’s better to show people how to do it. I think it’s nice to meet so many people who are also loving their dog and want to go out ski mountaineering. That’s why I did these ski mountaineering camps, and I think it’s really cool and the people get to know it. There are so many people who have a dog and also would like to go out in nature, but don’t know how to handle it. That’s nice, and I think it’s nice that there are so many people out there that want to do some activities with their dog. JEANETTE: What’s your best memory from doing this with Finn? ELISA: The best memory is – I’ve had Finn now for 6 years, and we’ve made a million nice memories. But right now, last week I had been to Dachstein, the glacier in Austria. It was a tough expedition. We made like 64 kilometers and 14,600 meters high, and I was not sure if I could make it and also if Finn could make it because I had last year an accident with my leg and it’s still not good. We had really rough conditions. The first day was a crazy storm, ice, and I could not see anything, and Finn I think also. We still kept on walking. The second day was really good, but the last part of Dachstein is you have to climb up, and I could not bring Finn up there. So I had to leash him down on the rock and he had to wait there. It was a crazy, horrible feeling for me because I heard Finn when I was on the top. He was crying because of where I am. But skiing down on the second day, there was a really rough, crazy storm up in the mountains with snow. But both Finn and me were working so good together, so it was really nice. I think right now this is one of the nicest experiences I did. JEANETTE: For next year, you have a lot of other plans as well, and you’ll include Finn in this? ELISA: Yeah. Not only next year, I think also in the spring I want to do paragliding with Finn together. I dream that we’ll ski up with the skis and then I’ll bring a paraglider and fly together with him down. That’s something I really want to do. But to do paragliding is also not that easy, and also with a dog, so we have to train a lot. But I think there’s a lot of fun expeditions and other stuff awaiting me and Finn and it’s very nice. JEANETTE: You’re really pushing the limits of both of you. ELISA: Yeah. I don’t want to do anything without Finn because it’s horrible for me when he has to stay at home and I’m in the mountains. Before, we did everything together, like skiing, climbing. Also, he’s climbing a little bit, so it’s super nice. But the point of flying, dogs are not able to do it normally, so that’s a thing I really want to do with him. But we’ll have to train a lot for him before I really take him out in the air. I already bought a harness for him which fits for flying, and we will see how we will do it. JEANETTE: So people are actually flying with their dogs, even the big ones, already? ELISA: Yeah, there are some people out there who are flying. But a husky is not really small, so we really have to see how it will work. Finn is always, when he’s with me, he’s super chill and doing well, so I think he will also do it. But we will only do it if he really enjoys it. I will not push him. JEANETTE: What does it mean for you to bring your dog to all these activities? ELISA: For me, Finn is not only a dog; he’s my partner in crime, you can say. He’s always with me, and we’re a really good team. It’s really nice for me to bring him, and it’s also really good for me that he’s doing everything so well still, because he turned 6, so he’s not that young. He’s in a really good age and he’s still so eager to run and so happy, so it’s so nice to bring him everywhere. JEANETTE: There is one question we ask everybody on this podcast, and that is: if you had to do another sport or activity with your dog, what would it be? You and Finn are doing almost everything, but is there something else you would like to try? ELISA: I think we already did everything together. He’s been paddleboarding with me, he’s running, driving in the car for hours with me. [laughs] There’s nothing he doesn’t like. I think the flying thing is something I would love to do with him. JEANETTE: You will also be back for another episode in the summer about trail running with a dog, and I guess when you start flying, you’ll have to come back and talk about that as well. ELISA: Yeah, of course, and I can share all the experience I have with you about flying with a dog. [laughs] JEANETTE: Super. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. ELISA: Thank you. It was super cool.

02x02: Elisa Deutschmann | Ski mountaineering with dogs

Claudia Zenner

Gail Melson

02x01: Claudia Zenner & Gail Melson | How dogs affect children

01x06: Nick & Joy | Never give up on your dog

Tessa Philippaerts

01x05: Tessa Philippaerts | Canicross: Best tips when running with a dog

Trude Mostue

01x04: Trude Mostue | First Aid

Tom Andres

01x03: Tom Andres | No leash, no trouble

Eli Beate Sæther

01x02: Eli Beate Sæther | Agility, physical training and mental strength

01x01: Dallas Seavey | Building a team

00x00: Teaser

I loved the first episode and can’t wait to hear more.

Update: I love this podcast

Looks like this will be a amazing podcast

This is a great resource for those looking to get into dog powered sports!

Great resource!

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