Our story

Built around a life with dogs in the mountains.

Exploring with dogs since 2000

Bianca set up DogWalkTrail in 2000. With the help of the dog training institute De Roedel and the outdoor companies PBO and Ami Outdoor, she put together a sound plan for organising active holidays for owners and their dogs in a safe and responsible way. In the first years, DogWalkTrail ran alongside Bianca’s work in outdoor sports and as a ski instructor. It soon became a full-time job, and there was no longer time to work for other outdoor companies.

Bianca trained as an outdoor instructor and, for that work, took white-water canoeing courses and learned climbing and abseiling rope techniques, among other things. Her knowledge has only grown over the years. She completed the first part of the Roedeltraining course, aimed specifically at making the DogWalkTrail holidays run well, successfully completed Jan Fennell’s (The Dog Listener) course in 2010, and earned several certificates at workshops and seminars. She has attended workshops and lectures several times (TTouch by Linda Tellington-Jones, Erwin van Gijtenbeek, Turid Rugaas, Roger Abrantes, Konrad Lorenz, Ádám Miklósi and all-time favourite Ian Dunbar). Besides a bookcase full of books on dogs and wolves, there were also visits to wolf parks in Canada, the United States and Germany.

Bianca took outdoor first aid for people and first aid for animals, trained as a boarding kennel keeper, and in 2004 successfully completed the mountain walking guide course of the Austrian Alpine Club and the winter module of the Salzburger Bergwanderführer Verein. On top of all this, she also completed the Austrian ski instructor course.

François also has many years of experience in outdoor sports. From 1995 he worked for various outdoor companies, both in the field and in organisation. He led outdoor trips across Europe and in Nepal and Thailand. His favourite trips to guide were the glacier tours on the Jostedalsbreen in Norway. He also developed outdoor trips from Canada to New Zealand. For this work he completed several outdoor courses in Belgium and France, mostly in climbing, mountain biking and white-water canoeing.

In his own time, François has been in love with the mountains for years. His passion is climbing the many peaks around us and further afield in the Alps, and now and then even as far as Africa (Kilimanjaro) and the Himalayas. He also completed the Austrian ski instructor course, and successfully completed the mountain walking guide course of the Austrian Alpine Club and the winter module of the Salzburger Bergwanderführer Verein. First aid and working safely and with care for the environment are central to all these courses.

Where we used to rent group accommodation for our group weeks, we have had our own accommodation since 2003. It started with the apartment at Bianca’s house, and in 2010 we built the DogLogHomes (Canadian log cabins) in Lengdorf. In 2017 the current DogMountainInn in Niedernsill followed, and in 2019 we took over the management of the MountainChalets Storm and Down Under.

Over the years we have had an enthusiastic team (guides, tour leaders, managers, cleaners and all-rounders) working for us on staff or freelance. With an apartment building with five apartments, one room and a bistro, four large chalets, and guiding the many walks here in the mountains, combined with two children who were still small then and family and friends far away in the Netherlands, these people were essential to running the business.

After the COVID years (which also had a huge impact on tourism in Austria), and after many years of putting a great deal of energy, time and work into the business, we changed our approach from 2022. We sold the DogLogHomes and have since focused on DogMountainInn and the MountainChalets. They stand next to each other in Niedernsill, which makes the work a lot simpler. Now that the children are much more independent, we can guide more walks ourselves again, alongside the work in the office and at DogMountainInn. That was, after all, why we started doing this work in the first place.

DogMountainInn is the place where you stay. DogWalkTrail provides the activities, the local knowledge and the guided experiences.

You can find more about the walks and experiences at DogWalkTrail