Reindeer husbandry. We are “reindeer husbands”, not ranchers or farmers! We don't have any face around our livestock, they always going loose in the forest or on the mountains. When it is summer we are located on the mountains with our livestock and on the fall we will move them (with snowmobile and dogs) to the sea. So all winter long we are located not long from Umea (big city) in the deep forest. From our summer location to our winter location we have a distance of 300 kilometers! This is a very long distance for us to love our livestock and for them to walk as same as it is for the dogs ro run when working... Working reindeers. Well first, I could say that to work reindeer is not the same as working cattle or sheep! I guess that the closest thing you have out there in the world would be the cattle ranchers! As we never work reindeers in a small pen or any other fenced area, not even when we start our young dogs.  When we start our dogs and ask them to work the stock, we let them so simply loose without any fences or leash. Also I could add that we do not start them with the wanting of a dog that runs to the other side and work “balance”, we want the dogs to drive from the first beginning. This is our way to look at the baisic for a dog to work reindeers. I do not write too much about how we start our dogs but I can continue with how we want the perfect dog to work. I want my dogs to be able to do WHATEVER I am asking for, and that have no excuses! The "standard" working reindeer dog, the onw with limited training, needs to be able to drive the reindeers in the deepest forest and never leave one reindeer behind. This is so much harder on the dog then it sounds like, because mostly you don't see anywhere other than the first 10 meters in front of you. That is of course always a possibility to leave one or ten reindeers behind, even for the humans but I want my dogs to be that bright to "see" where it needs to be. The "standard" working reindeer dog also needs to run from one side to the other withour questioning it. And it can't stop running before it sees the fron of the herd on the specifik side. Then after that I also want my dogs to be able to work a small herd of seven reindeers to the large herd (wich is almost impossible to teach a dog how to do!). If you have a snowmobile it could also take hours even if the dictance is only 500 meters! I also want any dog of mine to be able to work one side of a large herd and steer them to the right direction, so I can be on the other side of the herd. There is of course so much more that I want from any dog of mine but these two things was the things that I decided to tell you about because this is the two hardest thing to do. Even for a person with snowmobile! It sounds so simpel and so silly, I can't say any other thing than this - you are welcome to visit me and try it yourself! It would have been so fun, and maybe I could get some tip of how to learn a dog all this. This could take years to learn a dog, because the only thing that can learn the dog to work like this is experianse.. I got a little video last winter of Chippa working reindeers. She is totally novice and works well, of course she is soon in the "standard working reindeer dog" stadium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zL0xcxYvVY. Reindeers. The reindeers get their calves on the spring, from the end of April to the beginning of June, but most of the hindes calve around the May 15th. The hindes seldom gets more then one calve each and gets theif first calve when they are two or three years old. From middle of April to beginning of July we never work the reindeers with dogs, never. In July we gather all the reindeers again and mark the calves with different marks. I have my own mark as same as any other reindeer husband has. The mark is not the same as the ones you see on cattle, our marks are located on the ears. The reindeers have some cuts in thei ear, each cut tells who the owner is. After the marking (which takes about three weeks) we let the reindeers go loose some more on the mountains and the next time we gather them would be in September. In September we gather them for the biggest slaughter each year. Now every reindeer husband picks their males that they are going to slaughter. This is a hard work of course! Then we let the reindeers go back to the mountains a last time. In November we bring them back once again and now we keep them the entire winter until April. Under that time we work them on a daily basis and always have one dor or two with us...     These photos below are nice: you can see that old dog trying to catch up the reindeers. But he has no chance! The distance to the reindeers just grows (3 seconds between the photo is taken)...       OBS! This male is a pup from one of my previous cross between Border Collie & Working Kelpie!