When asking Missi’s owner Tommi what made Missi the dog it was, after having achieved everything that can be achieved, Tommi replied without hesitation: “Intelligence, and of course a strong hunting drive”.
On 5th November 2006, Härkä-puron Emilia (FIN22041/01) gave birth to a litter of nine bear dog puppies in Aulis Aho’s kennel Kuohukorven. The sire of the litter was double champion Peräsalon Pete (FIN39798/01). The focus in breeding in this kennel was on well-functioning females; these must be found in the pedigree for at least five generations as an unbroken chain. Using bear-barking sires strengthen the healthy temperament and strong character of the offspring. “If a dog barks at bear, it also barks at elk” says Aulis.
In the meantime, Tommi Ruokosuo from Anjala had, based on his background with Finnish Spitz and in elk hunting, decided to acquire a Karelian Bear Dog as his first elkhound, and contacted the breed club for suggestions. Jorma Tahkola, based on his experience and after listening to the situation, guided Tommi to contact Aulis Aho. Aulis recommended that Tommi would take a female as his first bear dog, and Kuohukorven Missi was therefore registered as Tommi Ruokosuo’s dog on 23rd January 2007.
Unbroken trust
Many things fell naturally into place during Missi’s puppyhood. As Tommi worked a three-shift job, he collected the puppy a little later, waiting for a longer time off work in order to spend the first days full-time at home with the puppy. Since the puppy came during winter, outside pens had not yet been built and Missi spent a lot of time inside with people. All of this made the man and his dog imprint on each other right from the start, forming a foundation for seamless co-operation and trust. Of course, a couple of sofas had to be exchanged when the new family member was still looking for its boundaries. In puppyhood, obedience training was a daily part of Missi’s everyday life. When asking for recall, the intelligent puppy immediately learned that it had to come when asked. Precision in this, as in all other training, must be exceptionless; this way, the dog has a clear and safe environment to exist in. It knows what is expected of it. Missi was taken to her outside pen every day without a lead.
The obedience that was achieved could later be seen for instance at championship trial award ceremonies, where Missi, despite other dogs that were awarded and big crowds, was off lead under Tommi’s guidance, listening to its master’s wishes. The trust between them was flawless, and their relationship was in perfect order.
Impeccable obedience and controllability
According to Tommi, obedience training must be done somewhere else than in the forest. A puppy’s obedience must be on a level where the handler is a 100 % sure of success before doing a recall in the forest for the first time. Before that, one should rather not ask for recall at all; even just one unsuccessful recall can make the dog think that it does not matter whether it obeys in the woods or not. Obedience must also be continuously maintained by training it daily.
The work that was put in when Missi was a puppy paid off in the 67 elk hunting trials of Missi’s career: when elk was found, one could except full points for cooperation to be marked in the trial records. For Missi, obedience had been trained to perfection. When the dog was called away by a whistle at the end of a trial period, it was unnecessary to put it back on the lead, even in the forest – it followed its master back to the car off lead. At the Hirvenhaukut championships in 2012 in Kaavi, judge Jarno Heikkinen was very impressed when the GPS started to show that Missi was advancing towards an unwanted farm and Tommi steered his dog towards another direction only by whistling.
The same is known to have happened in 2013 at the Hirvenhaukut championships in Posio, when Missi was advancing towards a reindeer farm in Kuusamo. At the trials in Kiiminki, the whistle reportedly worked from a distance of more than 900 metres. Guiding Missi away from reindeer is a great example of the intelligence of both the dog and its master. When the dog was younger, it also followed reindeer more than enough. Tommi had always brought up the matter with Missi immediately when it happened with a loud enough voice, but no: the next time the dog was let off lead and it came across reindeer, off it went again.
One time, Tommi followed Missi through the GPS, guessing that it was following reindeer, and noticed the pair was coming towards him. The man stayed quietly waiting and a reindeer indeed jogged past right next to him. After a while, Missi came from behind and seemed to have a good time. The dog however noticed the man, stopped, and looked at him as if it wanted to find out what he thought of it all. Tommi asked with a calm voice: “Are you seriously going after a reindeer?” Missi went to its master, got a pat on the back and was guided back to the woods into the same direction where the reindeer had gone. After a while, it started barking at elk and after this, Missi never went after reindeer again. Raising the voice had not helped but when being kindly asked whether the dog was serious, Missi stopped running after reindeer. Tommi and Missi have completely wrecked the ingrained idea that teaching too many “manners” is harmful for hunting work.
Tommi finds that Missi’s early maturity suffered from Tommi’s lack of experience, and Missi was forced to proceed on its own. He also thinks that he was unable to take the puppy to the right places, in other words places where elks naturally spent time. During the first autumn in 2007, no barking at elk was heard, even though the GPS and snow tracks showed that the puppy had found elk. Missi only guarded a flock of five elks and hanged out with them. The dog occasionally reported back to Tommi only to return to guard the elk. It also caught a runaway elk but did not give off any sound. In this situation, the unshakeable support of an experienced breeder was necessary: “She has shown interest towards elk – she will give off sound eventually, just wait until next autumn…”
In the autumn 2008, when Missi was one year and 10 months of age and was wearing a GPS tracker, Tommi was roasting sausages by a campfire with his son. Missi was running about and all of a sudden, a series of barks rang out. Tommi started wondering aloud to his son, is that our dog? It was indeed – after a few more series of barks Missi came towards with an elk cow and its calf, which the dog managed to stop about half a kilometre away. Then, sound started to come: Missi held the elk at bay for two hours, after which Tommi asked Missi to come and made the elk run away. Missi stopped the elk successfully and barked again for more than two hours, after which a recall was made, and the elk ran away. After five hours of work, Missi came back from work, called by a whistle. Minds were filled with anticipation on the way back home.
Missi’s trial career – five-time winner of Hirvenhaukut championships and two 100-point-results
Missi barked her first trial on 31st December 2008 (HIRV1, 87,5 points) and the last one on 15th December 2017 (HIRV1, 76,5 points). Juha Pilli, the then chief of Tommi’s hunting group with experience in grey elkhounds, saw Missi working and encouraged the pair to attend a trial. The unexperienced dog man’s threshold to fight against the clock at a trial was lowered even further when Pilli arranged the whole first trial day. He got another judge and attended as the second one himself. Real elkhound enthusiast work where the breed is nothing but a minor detail.
Missi’s trial career, that went on for ten years, consists of 67 starts of which the most significant include five Hirvenhaukut championship wins in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. In 2014, Missi won the trials with a result of a full 100 points. On the second day at the Hirvenhaukut championship trials in question, strong evidence of the dog’s perseverance to follow elk was seen. Chief judge Heikki Länsimäki drove off the elk that Missi then followed for 23,5 kilometres, finally catching it five minutes after the trial period had ended. The result was however HIRV1, 79,5 points.
Missi worked a second full 100-point result on 9th October 2013. Missi won its first Hirvikuningatar (literally translates to Elk Queen) championship title in 2010 and the second one in 2011. The victory of the Nordic elk hunting match was taken in 2014. A significant win for the Karelian Bear Dog breed was Missi’s last championship victory at the age of 10 years, 95-point result from the Seniorihaukut championship trials for senior dogs in 2016.
Missi is an International, Nordic, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian working champion. Together with Tommi, it has visibly promoted the Karelian Bear Dog’s rise as a breed both in Finland and abroad. Missi has completed successfully both elk tracking and bear hunting trials. It also completed the competition Idän sitkeä suurriistakoira (literally translates to Tough Large Game Hunting Dog of the East), where its total work time was nine hours and 54 minutes.
