Dog handler Positions...

Dog-handler / Farmhand

We offer a number of different internship roles in Hetta Huskies and this page describes our farmhand role.

We developed this role to essentially give those who wished, the chance to apply for an easier role than our trainee guide / apprenticeship role which is too all-encompassing for some.

Since there ARE less hours per day involved in this role than in our classic traineeship role, there is clearly also less expected of the participant since there simply won't be sufficient time to train you in a wide variety of tasks and responsibilities. Hence, please don't expect to be running safaris, training dogs, working on complex building projects or interacting much with clients in the farmhand role. Your focus will be on the basic manual work and cleaning roles which can be taught with relative ease, in combination with helping with Eliel and cleaning and tidying in the farmhouse (where there are up to 20 dogs inside recuperating from various issues at any one time). Essentially, you will be doing lots and lots of cleaning and either snow-work or ground-work, depending on the season. This role is effectively the role that volunteers and trainee guides in their first season play on most husky farms and it is still very valuable to us whilst at the same time giving those of you wihtout the time or energy to commit to the more intensive role, a chance to participate in the Hetta Huskies team.

You will be expected to carry out these basic jobs with good grace, understanding that these (literally crappier) jobs like picking up poop, need to be done each day and that they are not only vital and directly related to the overall health and welfare of the dogs, but that, by doing them, you are releasing guides from them to be able to train the apprentice guides and dogs and generally focus more on the skilled tasks which also need to be completed, daily. Clearly, too, someone has to watch Eliel and supervise the recuperating house dogs throughout the day. Hence, those visiting us in this role are very much appreciated since they are also doing work which is critically important for the smooth running of the business as a whole.

Different people will naturally be better suited to either the demanding apprentice role or the farmhand role so please read the descriptive manuals about the relative roles to see which would be the better fit for you. For some, the farmhand role which is similar to the role that most volunteers do on most husky farms, would not be challenging or stimulating enough. For others, the apprentice guide role would be too demanding and stressful.

However, it is worth noting that all of the 5* ratings on sites like helpx and workaway to date (2009 - 2014) have been in response to the apprenticeship role, since the farmhand role is new to us. Of course, we are confident that volunteers who visit in the farmhand capacity will, in future, also leave similarly positive reviews since, clearly, people enjoy this basic role also at other farms and for the right person, this role is perfect. Best yet, you get to do it on our farm, which is known for always giving more than is promised and which has some of the highest sleddog welfare standards in Scandinavia.

Hence, please think hard about which of our roles you want to apply for since we want you to be happy in what you have applied for and not want to either wishing you were getting more responsibility and more chance to learn (if you applied for the farmhand role) or, conversely, be doing less hours or be less submerged in the lifestyle (if you applied for the apprenticeship). We only have a certain number of slots available for both roles so for the time period you have applied for, in one or the other, you will unfortunately not be able to switch.

This is our standard first response letter, including pushback, which we send out following all initial enquiries.

If you are still interested in applying, having read the standard 'pushback' response, please complete and submit our APPLICATION form

Please click here to go to our main page on volunteering (since these pages are not live on our website so it is otherwise impossible to navigate between them). This page highlights the differences between the different volunteering options at Hetta Huskies.

If you are interested in the husky guide apprentice role, please click here.

If you are a veterinary or medical professional or student, please click here since you are probably more interested in our medical overseer role.