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This historic document explains the rationale behind the 1970s MARKOVO breeding project which rescued the Leonhard Seppala Strain from extinction. In its pages can be clearly seen the thinking and the principles that led to the establishment of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog as a separate evolving breed in its own right. It was originally published in the first issue of "Seppala Network" newsletter in May 1995.
MUCH
INK HAS BEEN SPILT over the last decade on the subject of Seppala
Strain and the 1970's 'MARKOVO rescue effort', yet what was done in
those years and why seem to have been widely misunderstood. Perhaps
it is about time to clarify just what the contemporary Seppala Strain
is and why it exists.
In 1976 after I had terminated the MARKOVO
project I published a booklet entitled "The Seppala Siberian: A
Breeder's Manual." It was privately printed in a limited edition of
only 24 copies. Since that time it has been widely distributed in
pirated photocopy form, despite a clear copyright notice; its title
has been plagiarised as well. I suppose I should be glad it was so
popular; I would be happier had its content and message been more
clearly understood.
A capsule definition of Seppala Strain was given
in the 1976 book as follows:
Seppala Siberian: Any registered Siberian Husky whose pedigree lineage may be traced back exclusively to foundation stock bred by Leonhard Seppala or imported directly from Siberia.
That at least was a simple and concise definition. It was also explained that the above definition excluded the stock bred in the 1930's and later by Eva B. Seeley's Chinook Kennels under the kennel names CHINOOK, ALYESKA and WONALANCET. I touched briefly upon reasons to support such an exclusion but without giving the matter too much emphasis. Much current misunderstanding may stem from my failure then to highlight the Seppala-vs-Seeley dichotomy.
TEN YEARS
LATER Douglas W. Willett chose to redefine what (in his view) was
meant by 'Seppala Siberian' in accordance with his own agenda. His
definition and my own are basically compatible; they merely approach
the subject from different vantage points. His methodology, however,
with respect to the practical application of his definition, was
radically different in that it employed a quantitative method in
which each dog's pedigree was analysed and a percentage calculated
for the 'pure Seppala' lineage behind the individual dog in question.
This method resulted in a situation in which it immediately became
unclear what was to be considered a 'Seppala dog.' In Willett's
percentage terms, where was the cutoff point to be -- 80%, 90%, 95%,
98%? For nearly every single AKC/CKC Siberian Husky is 'part
Seppala.' Even the famous CH. MONADNOCK'S PANDO, to take an extreme
example, will be found to have 68% Seppala background in his
pedigree! Willett sought to exclude show-dogs from his definition by
means of a proviso that no pedigree line should pass through three
generations or more of cosmetically-oriented breeding, yet this also
created its own uncertainties. The situation has never been resolved,
with the result that many Seppala/outcross dogs are now widely
regarded as 'pure Seppalas' despite the Seeley content of their
pedigrees.
My own position is that this kind of
quantitative analysis is unsatisfactory as it tends to degrade the
purity of the bloodline through the gradual admixture of Seeley-based
stock. I have watched the percentages crawl downward until there are
now very few 98% or better litters bred and more and more stock in
the 90% to 95% range is regarded as 'pure Seppala. As Willett points
out in his 1992 Breeder's Manual, nearly all the 'SEPP-ALTA spinoff
kennels' are based on stock from outcross matings! Willett has tended
over the years to sell off his less successful outcross efforts while
retaining his MARKOVO-based pure-strain stock. In the recent manual
he expresses his feeling that his satellite kennels can now breed
back to pure strain animals for several generations, but so far no
such tendency to do so has been observed in most cases.
My present standards are based on the premise
that no degree of Seeley admixture is admissible. This premise is no
vain personal quirk but is grounded in the parameters which governed
the breeding of Harry Wheeler, William L. Shearer III, and J. D.
McFaul for over thirty formative years of Seppala Strain history! For
me a dog is either Seppala Strain, in which case no Seeley-derived
stock is present in the pedigree (apart from the now
vanishingly-small element of contaminant unavoidably introduced by
LYL OF SEPSEQUEL into the MARKOVO foundation) -- otherwise it is not,
whatever the quantitative percentage of Seppala background might
be.
LET
ME ATTEMPT to explain the reasons for the standards I now apply,
which are the same ones that were applied in 1970-1975 for purposes
of the MARKOVO project. These reasons have mostly to do with the Eva
B. Seeley breeding programme and agenda adopted by the Seeley
successors in later years.
During the early 1970's I enjoyed a lengthy and
voluminous correspondence with Lawrence L. Prado Jr., then of Milton
NH. Larry was intensely interested in the early breed history of the
registered Siberian and was well-placed to research these matters. He
visited early breed figures (in some cases their widows or children),
unearthing large quantities of photos, memorabilia, kennel records
and similar material. The ultimate result was an imposing and
exhaustive breed history entitled "Canis Sibiricus."
Prado's manuscript was never published despite
strenuous efforts on his part to find a publisher for it. His
research efforts caused great alarm in certain quarters in New
England, especially since some of the facts he discovered reflected
no great credit upon the bright stars of the S.H.C.A. show-dog
heaven. Indeed, Prado discovered that the generally-accepted story of
the first AKC Siberian registrations was not in accord with recorded
facts; he learned that parties whose names were completely unknown in
the 1960's (such as Judge Julien A. Hurley of Fairbanks, Alaska, and
Oliver Shattuck of Alton NH) were those chiefly responsible for the
first AKC Siberians, the first Breed Standard, and the first Bench
Champion of the breed!
The known existence of the Prado manuscript is
thought to have spurred the writing and publication of the first
major 'breed book' for Siberians, "The Complete Siberian Husky" by
Lorna Demidoff and Michael Jennings. We probably have Prado to thank
for the fact that the Demidoff/Jennings book contained as much
detailed history as it did, slanted though it may have been. Prado's
research also disclosed a great deal of confusion regarding the early
Siberian breeding of Eva B. Seeley. It was found that birth dates of
certain sires, dams and litters failed to correspond properly and
that there were 'corrections' of AKC Stud Book entries involving
early Seeley breeding. The facts regarding crucial animals such as
TOSKA OF WONALANCET and CH. CHEENAH OF ALYESKA remain unclear to this
day.
THE
SEELEY KENNELS were also, of course, deeply involved in the
development and promotion of the registered Alaskan Malamute breed
during the same period of time that the Siberian was being
registered, bred and promoted as a show dog. This by itself does not
imply that there was any mixing of the two breeds. Nonetheless, given
the obvious confusion demonstrated by the Stud Book corrections and
the birth-date discrepancies, considerable doubt remains as to what
really occurred at Chinook Kennels during the formative years of the
AKC Siberian Husky. Although the earliest Seeley stock produced a
relatively rangy animal, Seeleys made great efforts to breed a
different type that was more 'short-coupled', thus initiating the
reformation of the breed following a show-ring agenda. Generations of
Siberian fanciers have noted the problem of Malamutish appearance,
shortness of leg, snap tails, heaviness of bone and tendency to
grossly over-standard body weight displayed by many dogs produced by
the Seeley-derived show bloodlines.
One incontrovertible source of known Malamute
admixture in the registered Siberian is none other than the legendary
Leonhard Seppala leader TOGO. The 1914 All-Alaska Sweep- stakes entry
documents for the Seppala team describe TOGO's sire SUGGEN as a
half-breed of Siberian and Malamute! TOGO of course made his
contribution to Seppala Strain as well as the Seeley bloodlines; but
the Seeley foundation depended much more heavily upon TOGO progeny.
TOTO, the dam of TANTA OF ALYESKA the celebrated Seeley foundation
bitch, was a TOGO daughter. SEPP III, a stud owned by Dean C. F.
Jackson, sired by TOGO out of an unknown dam, was also crucial to the
formation of the Seeley strain.
TOGO's main contribution to Seppala Strain was
through his grandson SMOKEY OF SEPPALA; early photos of SMOKEY show a
black and white, short-legged, wide-fronted dog with a Malamutish
face and earset. Seppala Strain is stuck with SMOKEY OF SEPPALA, but
his proportional contribution is not high in contemporary stock. More
importantly, the SMOKEY type has virtually disappeared from the
strain, whereas in the mainstream Seeley-derived strains, show-ring
judging (and therefore breeding) over the years has consistently
favoured the heavy-set, heavy-boned, short-legged type which tends to
assort genetically in concert with other typically Malamute traits
such as wide earset, aggressiveness, snap tails, etc.
The male side of the initial Seeley foundation
litter, Leonhard Chapman's DUKE, a dog imported from Alaska, has had
his breed origins called into question by at least one prominent New
England sleddog personality who was around at the time. It is odd
indeed that no photographs of so crucial a foundation dog as DUKE
seem to exist, the more so as abundant photographic evidence has
survived of practically all the other dogs involved in the early
Chinook Kennels breeding.
Anyone who doubts the confusion surrounding
early Seeley breeding need only turn to the pages of the SHCA Bible,
"The New Complete Siberian Husky" by Michael Jennings. On pages 60-63
in the discussion of early Seeley breedings two different dams are
given for CH. CHEENAH OF ALYESKA (CHEEAK OF ALYESKA in the text and
TOSCA OF ALYESKA in the accompanying pedigree); this confusion is one
which has been passed down from the
1930's!
LET
US NOW RETURN to the subject of Seppala Strain and the circumstances
which surrounded the MARKOVO undertaking. The late 1960's were the
heyday of early show and pet-oriented Siberian breeding. In southern
Ontario where I then lived, I saw many large, heavy-boned black and
white show dogs up from the USA being 'campaigned' in Canada. Some
handlers were unaware that the Canadian Standard of the day contained
a weight disqualification (unlike the AKC Standard which disqualified
by height only); several very famous US Working Group winners were
'weighed out' to the outrage of their owners or handlers. As a
newcomer to the breed, hanging around dog shows I saw quite a few of
these Malamutish monsters. But as I read bulletins, newsletters,
books and pamphlets I began to discover occasional photographs of the
original authentic Siberian dogs: dogs like John Johnson's leader
KOLYMA and the Johnson team of Ramsay imports that won the 1910 Nome
Sweepstakes, or the early Leonhard Seppala teams. I was puzzled,
because they were not at all the same dogs I saw in the show
ring!
I gradually became convinced (although I already
owned three Canadian Champion show dogs) that what I really wanted
was the dog that won the All-Alaska Sweepstakes in 1910, not the dog
that won the Working Group last weekend! But I had no idea where to
find such a dog. My good friend Lorna Jackson, then one of the top
pro handlers in Canada and a former Malamute breeder, suggested I
visit the kennels of her friend 'Bunty' Goudreau (nee Ricker). It was
at Bunty's SNOW RIDGE kennels in Chelmsford, Ontario, that I first
saw DITKO OF SEPPALA and his progeny. Those were the first dogs I had
seen that resembled the photos of KOLYMA, SCOTTY and other famous
Siberians of the 1910 decade. A year later I was able to purchase
DITKO and that was the real beginning of the 'MARKOVO rescue
effort.'
Nobody other than my foolish self was then
interested in the Seppala dogs. The McFaul kennel had sold out in
1963; the few McFaul dogs then remaining alive were seven to twelve
years old in 1970. Of course the show people had no interest in them;
I was told that DITKO had a 'dirty face' and an 'ugly brownish
colour.' Neither was there much interest from the racing community.
Most of the southern Ontario 'racers' that I knew were already
committed to the perennial project of breeding the 'dual-purpose
Siberian', a 'good-looking dog that can also run.' Meanwhile the
folks in the fast lane were getting rid of Siberians as fast as they
could; even the renowned J. Malcolm McDougall was switching over to
Alaskan Huskies as Roland Lombard and Keith Bryar had done before
him.
There were very few Seppala dogs left, anyway,
and fewer still were available to me. Nonetheless, I was delighted
with my discovery. Not only did the McFaul stock closely resemble the
original and authentic Siberian dogs, but subsequent digging in CKC
Stud Books revealed two incandescent facts: first, these dogs owed
nothing to the early Chinook Kennels breeding about which Larry Prado
was learning such disturbing things and, second, they went straight
back to the last (1930) Siberia imports in as little as four or five
generations! Clearly I had found what I was looking for; not perhaps
the dog that won the Nome Sweepstakes, but at least his very direct
inheritors, untainted by show breeding or by the Chinook Kennels
uncertainties.
MUCH
HAS BEEN MADE in the pages of "Racing Siberian Husky" and in various
books and pamphlets by Willett and Petura of the supposed fact that
the MARKOVO foundation stock were not sleddogs! Willett writes that
"the strain was kept alive, although by breeding relatively untested
animals in the working sense." The statement is misleading, as the
majority of the MARKOVO foundation stock were working sleddogs.
(SHANGO OF SEPPALA and DUSKA OF SEPPALA, both obtained from Earl
Norris, were the exceptions but were certainly both superior dogs
with no defects that might have cast their working ability in doubt;
they were simply too old and in the case of DUSKA, not in my hands
for long enough to be part of a team. In my opinion Norris was hardly
likely to give kennel room to any dogs of questionable working
ability, so I had considerable confidence in the working genes of
SHANGO and DUSKA.)
Make no mistake about it -- the MARKOVO project
was an eleventh-hour rescue operation. I had very little to choose
from. Despite the scarcity of stock, I did reject several McFaul and
Gagnon dogs that were offered to me. But time was of the essence and
I simply used the best animals that I could locate and obtain at that
time. The whole thrust of the MARKOVO project was to produce from the
aging broodstock I had found enough viable young stock that the
strain might survive. Although the project was begun in 1970, it was
not until spring of 1973 that I even became certain that it would
really be possible to keep Seppala Strain alive and viable in pure
form. Once its survival had been assured, then a performance-based
standard could be applied to restore the Seppala dog to its rightful
position in the sleddog world. As indeed was done by Doug
Willett!
Anneliese Braun-Witschel writes, "As for the
'Seppala dog', the credit for what it is as a working dog today goes
exclusively to Doug Willett." (Perhaps Leonhard Seppala, Harry
Wheeler, Bill Shearer, Donnie McFaul and a few others also deserve
their share of the credit, Anneliese! But not, as she points out,
Jeffrey Bragg.) I claim no credit whatever for the working ability of
contemporary Seppalas. But I do feel that I can claim full
responsibility for their continued existence! Had I waited for Doug
and Anneliese to come along there would be no Seppala dog today. I
must emphasise that in 1970 when the MARKOVO project was undertaken,
nobody in the racing community had any interest whatever in the
continued existence of the McFaul Seppala bloodline. Few cared any
more about registered Siberians of whatever stripe! Of those among
the racing fraternity who did own a few pure Seppala dogs at that
time, such as Earl Norris, Verner Zoschke, Jimmy Orr, Earl Kellett,
Gus and Johanna Wilson etc., to the best of my knowledge none
produced a pure Seppala line that carried on to the present day.
Norris alone deserves credit for at least being willing to co-operate
to a certain extent with someone who was interested in seeing the
strain continued.
One of the several factors which led me to
terminate the MARKOVO project in 1975 was the recognition that my
personal circumstances in Saskatchewan would not allow me to
implement an adequate work-testing programme for the young stock.
Realising that such testing had to be the next stage and feeling
acutely the vulnerability of the Seppala Strain inherent in having
all its broodstock in one place (where one idiot with a shotgun might
wipe out the entire population), I decided to pass the torch on to
other hands.
THE GOALS OF THE MARKOVO PROJECT seemed clear and simple to me at the time and still do today. Thus it causes me some consternation to read RSH Racing Editor Rick Petura's description of me as "the person who conceptualized a pedigree-based view of the Seppala Siberian." To me that sounds like mere gobbledygook written to obscure something that was and is quite simple. So let me now try to put the raison d'etre of the MARKOVO stock -- and Seppala Strain -- into the simplest terms possible.
• The first Siberian Huskies that made a name for themselves in 1910 were simple native dogs imported from Siberia. They were not bred for dog shows, nor were they bred for races! They were just working sleddogs, the product of a harsh natural environment and naïve native breeding, yet in the Alaskan competitive scene they swept the field before them. Those dogs -- the John Johnson and Leonhard Seppala team dogs -- were the MARKOVO ideal.• By 1970 the Siberian dog had been changed into something else, partly by degeneration through neglect and the absence of natural selection, still more by the efforts of show dog breeders. The McFaul Seppala stock was then the closest remaining link to the original Siberian dog, as far as I knew. It had never been bred for the show ring. It was still only four or five generations removed from the Siberia imports of the 1930's. And it was the sole authentic surviving remnant of the breed's rootstock. All other bloodlines carried substantial proportions of Seeley background, including the top racing bloodlines such as Earl Norris' ANADYR and Roland Lombard's IGLOO PAK.
• The Seeley lineage had been shown by Larry Prado's research to have major clouds hanging over its origins. Moreover, it was heavily based on the TOGO line which was known to be adulterated with Malamute blood. Its direct successors, the MONADNOCK-based show bloodlines, were producing a type of dog alien to the original Siberian mould.
• The simple and obvious solution was to implement a breeding programme using only the original breed rootstock, or what was still recoverable of it: the McFaul Seppala stock. Such a breeding programme would simply ignore the widely-distributed Seeley-based stock as if it did not exist, or as if it were another breed. And that was exactly what was done in the MARKOVO breeding.
IT
IS NO EXAGGERATION to state that the contemporary registered Siberian
Husky really consists of two breeds: the pure-strain Seppala Siberian
and the mixed-lineage Seeley/Seppala dog. It is rather difficult to
consider both of these to be legitimate representatives of the
original Siberian dog. They are too different, too disparate in type
and appearance, in temperament and character, and in working
capability overall. If one is truly a Siberian Husky, then the other
must be something else. The contemporary Seppala dog is more
different from a show Siberian than the same typical show dog is
different from an Alaskan Malamute! If the 1910 Ramsay import dog is
taken to be the ideal, then the modern Seeley-derived lines have
strayed so far from that genome that they have forfeited any claim to
represent it.
It is interesting to me that Michael Jennings,
the Peturas and others keep insisting in one way and another that the
'pure Seppala' dog does not exist, or is a misnomer or a figment of
someone's imagination. Actually it is the 'pure Seeley' dog which
does not exist. All current bloodlines of AKC/CKC Siberians are found
to be either pure Seppala strain (a small minority) or a mixture of
Seeley and Seppala breeding (the vast majority) when one subjects
their background to analysis. The Seppala Strain is demonstrably
distinct in every way that counts from all other Siberian bloodlines
and is in no way a fantasy!
To write that someone "conceptualized a
pedigree-based view of the Seppala Siberian", as if the MARKOVO
concept were only a silly bit of vain pedigree snobbism without
relevance to the concept of 'the racing Siberian Husky', implies a
complete failure to comprehend not only what the MARKOVO project was
all about, but what principles had governed Seppala Strain breeding
for three decades prior to the MARKOVO
breeding.
For one instance, the Wheeler SEPPALA bloodline
was perpetuated entirely as a closed strain. Harry Wheeler did not go
along through the years buying new breeding stock from one kennel or
another as the whim seized him. He acquired a group of foundation
animals from the Leonhard Seppala/Elizabeth Ricker kennel operation
in Poland Spring, Maine, a group which included the three Siberia
imports KREE VANKA, TSERKO and VOLCHOK, plus three dogs bred by
Seppala in Alaska (BONZO, TOSCA and MOLINKA), and three bred in Maine
by the Ricker kennel (KINGEAK, DUSHKA and PEARL). To this group he
added one additional female bred by Alec Belford from Poland Spring
stock -- NANNA. Thereafter his strain and its breeding programme were
closed. Stock from the Seeley kennel was certainly available to
Wheeler as it was to others in the 1930's. He chose not to acquire
any.
For another instance, William L. Shearer III
(FOXSTAND) acquired foundation stock from the Poland Spring kennel.
In addition to his Poland Spring stock he also bought one animal from
the celebrated Seeley foundation litter of DUKE ex TANTA OF ALYESKA,
a bitch named SITKA OF FOXSTAND. In the late 1930's he bred at least
one litter from his Seeley bitch; stock containing this breeding was
later sold to Donnie McFaul when he began his GATINEAU breeding. Yet
later FOXSTAND breeding fails to show any lines to SITKA OF FOXSTAND
and subsequent contributions to the Shearer bloodline are confined to
Wheeler-bred stock such as N'YA N'YA OF SEPPALA or to Wheeler-derived
stock such as JEUAHNEE OF COLD RIVER. Apparently Shearer deliberately
purged the Seeley stock from his bloodline!
The parameters of closed breeding which governed
the Wheeler and Shearer kennels were later subscribed to by J. D.
McFaul when he acquired the remnant Wheeler stock in 1950 along with
the SEPPALA kennel name, for instead of merely adding the new Wheeler
dogs to the breeding stock he already had in his GATINEAU kennel, he
closed out the GATINEAU breeding, keeping only the FOXSTAND and
Wheeler dogs that he already had prior to the 1950 buyout.
Thus a consistent pattern emerges in which the
principal figures of Seppala Strain breeding in the 1940's and 1950's
deliberately maintained the strain free of the influence of Eva B.
Seeley stock.
Let it then be clearly understood that, no
matter what Rick Petura writes, I did not "conceptualize a
pedigree-based view" of Seppala Strain to govern the MARKOVO breeding
programme. The MARKOVO programme related exclusively to the
preservation of an existing closed bloodline. The parameters of
Seppala Strain breeding had already been set by Wheeler and Shearer;
they were carried forward by McFaul. I conceptualised nothing -- I
merely accepted those preexisting parameters.
IN
1970 IT WAS FELT that if the degeneration of the Siberian Husky
towards the status of a has-been -- a useless exhibition dog
incapable of performing its original function (like so many other
purebreds) -- was to be halted, if the Malamutisation of the Siberian
dog was to be undone, the simplest way of going about it was to
eliminate questionable bloodlines as far as possible and to return to
that broodstock which was fewest generations removed from the
original Siberian dog and which was phenotypically most like it. Once
a new base of purified stock had been made sure of, it would then be
a straightforward task to implement a performance-based selection and
breeding programme whose aim was the restoration of the breed to its
original function. That done, the degeneration would be halted and we
would once again have a real working sleddog of the original type.
The kennel name itself really says it all: I wanted simply to get
back to the original form and type of Siberian dog that came out of
the east-Siberian trading villages such as Markovo in the 1910
decade.
The subsequent performance of the MARKOVO
lineage in the hands of Doug Willett is testimony to the soundness of
the MARKOVO concept and proves that the basis upon which the
broodstock was selected was much more than silly pedigree snobbism.
If the MARKOVO foundation stock had been unproven animals "from
varied breeding programs" (as Barb Petura once wrote) with no
work-testing involved -- as the current mythology has it -- then what
Doug Willett has achieved in 18 years and one to three canine
generations would scarcely have been possible. If the McFaul strain
had been genetically "played out" (as Rick Petura speculates in his
booklet "Untold Tales"), Willett would never have made it out of the
back of the pack. Doug Willett deserves full credit, top marks and
high praise for what he has achieved with his SEPP-ALTA dogs in
head-to-head competition with top Alaskan Husky teams. But the
SEPP-ALTA dogs did not come out of thin air by spontaneous
generation! The genetic basis for their performance was present in
Willett's MARKOVO foundation stock, as it had been in the McFaul
stock from which it derived.
It is perhaps inevitable that most of the
commentary upon the MARKOVO project published in the last decade
should fall wide of the mark, since it was without exception written
by people who were not there at the time, who never saw the original
McFaul-bred foundation stock, who did not know me personally and
whose interactions with me were limited to one or two letters and the
purchase of a single dog. Thus most of the writing about the MARKOVO
years consists largely of uninformed speculation with little
grounding in the historical facts of the era. Willett's 1986 volume
"The Seppala Siberian" fails to convey an objective and coherent
history of both the MARKOVO period of 1970-1975 and the post-MARKOVO
years. The full story of the 1970 decade and the involvement of
Jeffrey Bragg, Betsy Bush, Larry Prado, Gary Egelston, Johanna
Wilson, Barbara Bailey, Curt Stuckey, Bruce Morrow and others in the
history of the revived Seppala Strain remains an 'untold tale' so
far. That is unfortunate, since it was an interesting, eventful and
crucial period for the breed.
IN CLOSING PERHAPS I should state that the original MARKOVO agenda remains as yet unfulfilled in its totality. We do not yet have the dog that won the 1910 Nome Sweepstakes running in harness in modern long-distance races. The fullness of the 1910 Ramsay import genome has yet to be restored. The potential and the possibility still exist, but the right persons to bring that potential to fruition have yet to come along. Doug Willett has carried the effort a long way towards ultimate reality. If and when the thing finally does happen and a Seppala Siberian team wins a major long-distance race (equaling or bettering the John Johnson Sweepstakes record in the process), the person who does the deed will stand upon the shoulders of giants whose names are Leonhard Seppala, Harry Wheeler, Bill Shearer, Donnie McFaul -- and Doug Willett.
THE MARKOVO EXPLANATION
The use of a Siberian's AKC/CKC pedigree, taken back to foundation stock, as the critical determining factor for membership of the 'Seppala Strain' within the general category of 'sleddogs' becomes easy to understand once the overall view of sleddog history which guided the MARKOVO effort has been explained. Here is an explanation of the MARKOVO historical interpretation, which is quite distinct from the mythical history of the Siberian dog usually included in breed propaganda.
• Just prior to 1908, two kinds of sleddogs existed in Alaska: Alaskan native dogs bred by Indians and Eskimos, and the various 'white man's breeds' imported from the south -- foxhounds, staghounds, pointers, setters, Saint Bernards and other breeds, along with many, many mongrels . Dogs from both groups were routinely used in Alaska to pull dogsleds. Cross-breeding between these two groups was a widespread and general practice.
• At that same point in time, an overall category of sleddogs also existed in eastern Siberia; it was composed of various tribal and regional varieties of sleddogs, hunting dogs and general-purpose canines. Native travel and trade brought about a constant mixing and intermingling of those canine varieties, producing a vast pan-Siberian heterotypic gene pool.
• In the year 1908 and thereafter, dogs from the pan-Siberian gene pool were funneled out of Siberia via the east-Siberian trading villages into Alaska, creating a third sleddog group there. The crossbreeding of course continued, merely adding the new group to the general Alaskan melting pot.
• As the Gold Rush drew to its conclusion, surplus-to-requirements sleddogs made their way out of Alaska to other parts of North America on the strength of Gold Rush publicity and attendant public romanticism fostered by the popular press. Two canine groups emerged to win AKC purebred status in the 1930's. From the predominantly Alaskan native dog group the purebred Alaskan Malamute was developed and from the experimental crossbreeding of Alaskan native dog and Siberian native dog, by and large, came the AKC Siberian Husky.
• That dogs were selected from the crossbred group to represent the Siberian came about for two reasons. Partly it was due to the scarcity of unmixed 'thoroughbred' Siberians at the time of the first registrations (some two decades after the original mass importations from Siberia). The Alaskans' mania for indiscriminate breed crossing had probably left relatively little pure Siberian stock available by that time. Perhaps even more it was owing to the desire of the New England breeders who gained control of the new breed to produce a dog of a different physical type and more striking appearance of colour and markings, that crossbred stock was found acceptable.
• One small breeding group of predominantly pure Siberian descent made its way into Canada directly from the hands of Leonhard Seppala. This group, though not entirely of pure Siberian origins, was still relatively purer than most of the AKC breed foundation stock used by New England breeders such as the Seeley CHINOOK Kennels. Moreover, the same Canadian group contained three of the last Siberia imports to leave Chukotka in 1929. These dogs, owned by Harry Wheeler, were registered with the Canadian Kennel Club in 1939 as the CKC 'Siberian Huskie' and constituted a distinct foundation group in its own right, independent from the AKC foundation of the early 1930's.
• The bulk of the imported Siberian native dog population introduced into Alaska in the 1910 era remained there, unregistered and progressively more and more crossbred, its descendants gradually amalgamating with the other two groups to form the sleddog population that is now known collectively as the 'Alaskan Husky.'
• Thus the Gold Rush era gave rise to four distinct present-day varieties of sleddogs, although only three of the four are popularly recognised and regarded as distinct breeds:
(1) The AKC Alaskan Malamute (representing part of the original Alaskan native dog genome, plus crossbreeding with large 'white man's breeds');(2) The AKC Siberian Husky (descended partly from the early Alaskan and New England experimental blending of the Siberian and Alaskan gene pools and partly from the same or similar dogs that formed the foundation of Seppala Strain);
(3) The unregistered 'Alaskan Husky' or Alaskan racing mongrel (representing the sleddog population that remained in Alaska, with contributions from Siberian native dogs, Alaskan native dogs and white man's breeds);
(4) The numerically tiny group now regarded as part of the AKC/CKC Siberian Husky but distinct from that breed in its history, genetics, type, temperament and working ability -- the 'Seppala Strain' descended from the CKC 'Siberian Huskie' registered by the Harry Wheeler kennels in Canada in 1939.
• The Seppala Strain, so-called, still represents the most direct and genetically pure connection to the original Siberian native dog (other than stock still remaining in Siberia). For that reason it was thought by the instigators and collaborators of the MARKOVO rescue effort (and is still thought now) to be worth preserving as a entity distinct from the general population of Seeley-derived AKC Siberian Husky stock, even though it is not regarded by AKC or CKC as a separate breed.
• It should be understood that the genetic purity of Seppala Strain is a relative matter, not an absolute one. No claim is made that it stems solely and uniquely from "purebred Chukchi sleddogs" (which were never pure within the western concept of the term 'purebred', in the sense of being genetically isolated from the dogs of other Siberian tribes). The claims that are made are that:
(1) Its origins are probably relatively purer than those of most of the AKC Siberian Husky breed foundation animals;(2) It has never been subjected to cosmetic breeding for exhibition purposes nor has any attempt ever been made to alter its original physique and type;
(3) Its breeding programmes have historically been oriented towards conservation of the strain and preservation of its original qualities rather than 'development' of a faster, or more short-coupled, or more flashily-marked dog;
(4) It has remained exclusively a working sleddog throughout its 64-year history, always bred and selected for sleddog mentality, physique, metabolism and endurance.
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