Tough People, Tougher Dogs

In 2010, the documentary film entitled 'Happy People: A Year in the Taiga' was released.  The documentary was written by Werner Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov, and was produced from television film work by Vasyukov.  The documentary depicts the life of the people in the village of Bakhta, along the Yenisei River in Siberia.

Dmitry Vasyukov had uploaded the video footage from the documentary to YouTube, but has since terminated that account.  This is the trailer for the documentary —

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QXa_gn0EFc

---

I found the self-reliance of the trappers portrayed in the documentary to be extremely impressive — in stark contrast to the typical urbanite of advanced nations, who thinks in terms of being dependent on government (even though they will never acknowledge their dependency, while simultaneously clamoring for it).

Here is a still image from Dmitry Vasyukov's video footage, showing Anatoly Blume doing some maintenance work to one of his trapping huts, in preparation for the journey back to Bakhta, since it was supposedly a rather mild winter day, at only -33 ° C below 0 —

---

---

And here is a sequence of still images from the same video footage, which show Anatoly Blume during the journey of approximately 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) back to Bakhta from the Siberian wilderness where he traps, while his dog runs the entire distance trailing him on his snowmobile.  The dog runs the entire day (however short, due to the winter season), and still shows no signs of tiring in the night footage shot as they approach Bakhta, or even when they arrive home.  Amazing.   How many people could even make that journey on a snowmobile, with the temperature at -33 ° C, never mind running the entire 100 mile distance non-stop? —

---

---