More Than Mantrailing: A Retreat With Your Dog in the Swiss Mountains

There is something rather special about packing up the car, heading into the Swiss mountains with your dog and knowing that, for the next three days, your only real job is to have a brilliant time together.

It was a shared love of mantrailing, community, dogs adventure that led Danielle of Frank ’n’ Scents Mantrailing and Eszter of Tanti Loves Canine to create our Swiss mantrailing retreats. We wanted to bring people together somewhere beautiful, give them some fantastic trailing and, most importantly, create an opportunity to spend a few days genuinely enjoying their dogs. Because really, how often do we get to set aside an entire few days just for them?

When Dog Training Meets a Holiday

Of course, there is plenty of mantrailing. It’s the reason we’re all there. But something changes when you have three days together rather than a few hours on a weekend morning. There’s no rush to squeeze everything in. We can explore different environments, plan trails for the individual dogs in front of us and have time to watch other teams work. Somewhere along the way, you inevitably become pretty invested in teams you had never even met a few days earlier.

The holiday part matters just as much. We choose locations because we actually want you to enjoy being there, and Switzerland gives us a spectacular playground. There is designated time with nothing planned, so you can go exploring with your dog, take a cable car, find somewhere lovely for lunch, have a nap or do absolutely nothing if that’s what you fancy. This is your holiday too, and we want you to go home feeling like you actually had one.

One evening, dinner is on us. It’s a chance for everyone to get together, eat, have a drink and enjoy being in the same place without a long line in our hands. The trail videos usually make an appearance too, so anyone who fancies it can have another look at their dog, ask questions and geek out over all the tiny details with us. It’s relaxed, social and completely optional; stay and talk dogs all evening or head off and put your feet up.

A Few Days Where Your Dog Gets To Be The Clever One

Perhaps our favourite thing about mantrailing is what happens to the relationship between dog and handler when the dog knows something you don’t. You know where you started and you know there is somebody out there to find, but your dog has to tell you everything that happens in between. That means trusting them, learning how they communicate and sometimes following them confidently in a direction that makes absolutely no sense to you.

Every dog comes with their own personality, experience, strengths and quirks, so the trails are created around the team standing in front of us. Over several days there is time to explore new challenges, notice the little things and perhaps understand each other a little better. Progress usually sneaks in there too, but some of our favourite moments have very little to do with how technically difficult a trail was. They’re the moments when a dog does something wonderful and their handler turns around with that enormous grin that says, “How bloody brilliant are you?”

Those are the moments we never get tired of.

Engelberg 2026: Where It All Began

In May 2026, twelve teams joined us in Engelberg for three days of mantrailing, adventures and an awful lot of laughter. With working teams and spectators joining us from across the world, it was a wonderfully international group brought together by a shared love of dogs, mantrailing and a good adventure. Our spectators became every bit as much a part of the group too, moving between teams, watching different dogs work and joining in with everything going on around them.

Engelberg gave us an incredible playground. We trailed beside the lake, through the town and amongst some absolutely stunning scenery. We also got slightly carried away. At one point our innocent mantrailing retreat became a murder investigation following the suspicious demise of the unfortunate Heidi Stöckli, with clues and trails weaving through Engelberg as teams pieced together what had happened. Then came camouflage day, because apparently mantrailing in the Swiss Alps wasn't entertaining enough for us.

It was silly, creative and enormous fun. Dogs surprised us, handlers surprised themselves and there was some fantastic mantrailing along the way. But when we look back at Engelberg, we remember the whole experience, the people, the dogs, the scenery, the laughter and all those moments that happened in between. That helped shape what we wanted to take forward into our next retreat.

Next Stop: Davos 2027

In April 2027, we’re heading to Davos, taking everything we loved about Engelberg while deliberately giving everyone a little more room to breathe. There will be three days of mantrailing, individually planned trails, new environments, an evening meal on us and optional video analysis, alongside protected time to simply enjoy where you are.

If you’ve travelled from near or far with your dog to spend a few days in the mountains, we want you to actually experience them. Head off for a walk, explore Davos, take your dog somewhere beautiful, find a café, venture up a mountain or retreat to your accommodation and enjoy doing absolutely nothing for a while. Then we’ll get back together and carry on trailing.

That balance is really important to us. We want you to enjoy some brilliant trails and learn more about your dog, but we also want you to laugh, switch off, explore somewhere new, meet people you might never otherwise have met and have the time to appreciate the dog you’re sharing it all with.

A Few Days Worth Remembering

Years from now, you probably won't remember every junction your dog got right or exactly what happened on trail number five. We hope you’ll remember the place, though. We hope you’ll remember the people you shared it with, the ridiculous moments, the beautiful ones and the adventures that happened when nobody was holding a long line at all.

Most of all, we hope you'll remember having a few days where everyday life could wait and you got to simply enjoy your dog. We spend an enormous amount of our lives with them and, somehow, it still never feels quite long enough. They are there for the ordinary days, the busy days, the difficult days and everything in between, so there is something rather lovely about occasionally making the adventure entirely about them.

That is what these retreats have become for us: a chance to go somewhere beautiful, do something we absolutely love and make some very good memories with our dogs along the way.

Our next adventure takes us to Davos in April 2027, and we would love for you and your dog to be part of it.