Usvan Mimmi had one special feature. At the cabin in Hossa, it started to carry alive pike from the lake to the porch. We did not know what to think of it. In the autumns, we were on rivers lurking at mallards. Mimmi was running around in the reed bed and suddenly, it carried a pike in its mouth. In other words, it had very primitive Karelian Bear Dog traits.
I picked up a new dog, Usvan Mari, from Veikko in Ihamaniemi. This happened during the school winter holiday, so our whole family came along to pick up our new ‘family member’. The weather was very cold, so Veikko was taking the puppies into the house. Mielonen had visited me for a couple of days during New Year’s, so we had gotten more acquainted, and he knew the conditions in which I kept my dogs.
I immediately paid attention to a perky little puppy that bravely defended itself while fighting for a bone. After half an hour, I said ”I’ll take that one”.
When we came home, Mari kept even Mimmi in check. Mari was unbelievably brave, persistent, and lively.
When Mari was 8 months old, I took it with me to Hossa. When I let it out from the car in the cape where our cabin was, it heard a dog bark from about 400 metres away. Mari rushed with rage to the end of the cape, swam across the river and drove the neighbour’s hound and spitz up on the roof of the doghouse. Then it returned the same route it had went, sat down on cabin stairs and looked over Iijärvi. It felt like Mari was thinking “Territory claimed”.
The next day, I shot a female capercaillie in the hiking area of Hossa with the help of Mari’s good bark. We slept the night, and, in the morning, I shot two mallards which Mari retrieved from the river. I had not yet taught it to retrieve.
After a few days, I took Mari to the eastern wilderness, less than ten kilometres from the Russian border. I knew that there were reindeer in the area, and wanted to see how the dog would react to them. Near the reindeer stable, I realised that the animals were inside of it. Mari rushed inside with rage and reindeer came out in panic from every opening. When the stable was empty, Mari sat down in front of an opening on the stable wall. It wiggled its tail and seemed to be asking: “Do you have more work for me, here I come!”
The resilience of Mari’s character is described by a funny incidence. We once travelled abroad for a week and took the dog to a kennel for that time. The owner told us that once we left, Mari started to immediately dig in the pen. It had dug deep holes, some of them all the way down to the lower level of the wall of the pen. The kennel keeper had fallen in one of the cavities when going inside the pen.
One time, a more special episode happened with Mari. I had a habit of going for a one-hour run in the Hiittenharju terrain before work. Dogs usually ran free and came with me back home. Mari sometimes ran after elk but returned then to our fenced yard. Even this time, I heard it bark, but the bark was still. During the morning report, I was told that a patient had gone missing during the night. I told the nurses to go see if Mari was still barking. This happened and guided by Mari, a dead patient was found.
In Harjavalta, large-hoofed elk with trouble moving began to be found in the forests behind the Kokemäki river. One time, Adam Mykkänen phoned me while I was the secretary of the wildlife management association, telling me that yet another dead and crippled elk was found on a field. I took Mari with me. The dog started to become angry with us when we went up to the elk. Already then, I thought that we will have trouble in elk hunting with Mari. And that is exactly what happened.
I went to Hossa with Mari for many autumns. Then, one summer I was informed that I had been chosen for a position at the hospital in Kellokoski, Tuusula, located in Southern Finland. I was not prepared for that. We were phased by a difficult question: what to do with the dogs? We could not take them to the city. Mimmi then went to a live on the yard of a large farmhouse. Adam Mykkänen took Mari, that then had at least one litter sired by Priha.
While living here in Järvenpää, Southern Finland, I judged elk hunting trials. You could see Karelian Bear Dogs, but mainly “grey” ones. I was also chief judge at the district championship trials. I once had one week’s worth of holiday days to use up. I used those days to judge alone six dogs in one week.
I was retired in the end of 1998. We moved into the suburbs. We started thinking about if we should still get another Karelian Bear Dog. The son of Usvan Kirre had been in the home of my now life partner in Polvijärvi.
In 2003, I went to Toivakka to pick up a six-month-old female Hirvikolun Netta. We started calling it Opri. Its sire was Jämäkän Retu and dam Huhtian Täplä. Retu was a double champion, Täplä a working champion (certificate from shows). The breeder said that the puppy had already gone after elk.
Opri had grown up in a calm country environment. In the beginning, it was a little confused over the sound of planes, for instance, but soon became adjusted to its new environment. The dog could choose to spend time on our yard all day long, if it wanted to.
The following May, we went to our cabin in Hossa. Once school had ended for the summer, my grandson joined me. Opri sneaked out from the door for a little runaway trip. We heard it barking some distance away and drove after it by car. A female elk was standing next to the road with its calves, the dog circling around them.
At the beginning of that autumn, Opri was barking at elk in our neighbour’s field. It was running after the elks but did not go after them over rivers or ponds. Later that same autumn, it started wandering in unpopulated terrain. It was not sensitive to large bogs or hilly wilderness. When we prepared for elk hunting, I let it outside to do its business at about six o’clock in the evening. The dog did not return inside. I heard it barking somewhere far away (reindeer or elk?). It did not return to the cabin all night. At eleven in the evening, I drove to a nearby hill where it was barking intensely. At three in the night, I went outside to see if the ‘girl’ had returned. It lied on the porch in the warm autumn night. It seemed to have potential.
Then we faced a setback. Next year in August, we were about to leave Hossa to visit home. I was washing the dog and noticed that one of its nipples had swelled. At home, the dog was operated: mammary tumour, sterilisation to prevent renewal and a “sick leave” all autumn, along with lifelong medication. The veterinarian underlined that a quite long sick leave would be necessary. However, already in October, Opri was moving around in the forest an hour at a time.
The following autumns, I did not take Opri to weekend-long hunts but wandered calmly with it in terrain where elk was found. It barked well at elk but followed them for less than half an hour at a time.
The memoirs of Jouko Mutanen have been published in the Pystykorva magazine in 2014 in seven parts. The memoirs are now available online for the first time ever. Mutanen gave the original texts he wrote to the Finnish Spitz Association (Suomen Pystykorvajärjestö) in 2012.
