Accident date was 5th March 2006. 14 months later - May 2007 - I was living in Greenland.

Greenland’s east coast Ittoqqortoormiit is the remotest inhabited place in the western world, home for 500 people and over 500 working Greenland dogs, the only breed allowed by law above Greenland’s Arctic Circle. In Ittoqqortoormiit there’s a resident doctor, a dentist visits once a year, opticians rarely. It's a tough place. Reach 12 and kids can legally carry hunting rifles. Dog teams drive between houses and it can snow any month of the year. With luck an icebreaker re-supply ship comes twice yearly. Outsiders coming to work here have been known to freak out, panic and want out because it's so isolated. This is where I now live. Study Greenland maps and you’ll find regions marked “UNKNOWN” or “UNEXPLORED”. These areas begin less than 250 miles from my backdoor.

I have dogs again. Dog hairs are on my clothes and life is beginning to feel rosy once more.

Any Greenlandic community with electricity is known as “a city”. We have electricity and a store that sells anything from baby food to firearms, digital cameras to narwhale nets. What I eat is determined by what I recognise from food packaging pictures. The language barrier is proving to be interesting. At the moment I speak neither Danish nor Greenlandic and by the sound of both it could be a while before I pick-up either lingo. People spoke of dangerous “cleavages” before I realised they meant crevasses.

It is a mighty expensive place to live or phone. Flying to New Zealand from here is cheaper than making it over to west Greenland.

The first month I was here two polar bears were shot near my place. I held the claws of one that was shot. They were longer than my fingers. I watched hunters flense a narwhale at the flow edge while someone pointed out a swimming polar bear.

Rightly or wrongly the Canadian police (RCMP) have been accused of slaughtering 21,000 dogs during the 1960s and 1970s to immobilise the Canadian Inuit. Even now the controversy continues to the reason why. Within a decade the Canadian Inuit went from a semi-nomadic life to living in houses. It was one of the most rapid periods of social change for any ethnic group in all of human history.

Never again will working dogs dominate the Canadian north but  recent DNA study results have proved that Greenland Dogs and the Canadian Eskimo Dog are in fact genetically the same breed and it’s for this reason I moved to Greenland.

In Greenland  the atmosphere for dogs is a different story. Here dogs are living cultural icons. Greenland has over 20,000 working dogs. Laws are strict to make sure the breed remains pure.

I was two solid weeks building kennel boxes for my dogs. The site caused quite a stir since people here had never seen dog kennels before. They said it looks like a little town of its own and wondered if I were to get drunk wouldn't it be confusing to know which “house” I would choose to sleep in. It’s also been going around that people think it funny I speak English to my dogs.

Hunters go out sitting in tiny boats strapped on top of their sleds. A lot of hunting is done from the ice edge. Seals are shot for dog food. Hunters row out these dinky boats to retrieve dead floating seals. In winter and spring seals float because they are so fat.  Rowing back it's best not to tie a seal to the boat. A walrus can weigh around two tons sometimes three and regularly grab dead seals taking boats down with them. Miss the seal and a walrus will attack and launch itself on to the boat using its two-foot long tusks as barbs into the back of a hunter. Not good. Apparently it’s an appalling site and very difficult to remove an impaled hunter from a walrus. Enough to spoil anyone’s day.

Mid-May an old Greenlandic hunter shouted excitedly to me, “Big animal coming in”. With its single spiraled tusk I watched within a little crowd as dogs hauled a unicorn-like narwhale out of the water. The old and young folk were all smiles because for them this means food. By law west Greenland whale hunters must hunt with harpoons from kayaks. Here on the east coast no law exists. The whale was shot.

My pups Gus and Bigness were looking good.

May bought in the last of the winter storms. Permanently inside my house is a piece of plywood. The plywood is window size and I’ve driven nails part way around the edge. I swear one day a window will pop and I hope I'm home else I'll have a snow filled house. I wouldn’t like to come home to a bear inside either. It does happen.

My hands reaction to the cold again is good although for the moment I don’t go anywhere without HeatMax chemical hand-warmers.

Throughout May I went hunting seals with an ex-SIRIUS Patrol friend of mine, Martin. The SIRIUS Patrol is an elite Danish military unit whose purpose is to maintain Danish sovereignty, police jurisdiction and military surveillance in northeast Greenland by dog-team.

Out hunting seals I heard what I thought was the jingle from an ice cream van. It didn’t sound far away. I looked around expecting to see one. It was Martin’s mobile. It had us in fits of laughter.