Seppala Kennels 'SledDogBlog'

Hostile Takeover

It just recently crashed through to me that what amounts to a hostile takeover bid is now taking place in a minority sled dog breed -- and that it affects me directly, because my wife's 37 dogs are involved (not to mention two that I own).

Few people know much about the Chinook breed, apart from the fact that it originated with adventurer and Byrd Antarctic dog wrangler Arthur T. Walden, descending from his famous 1920's lead dog who gave his name to the breed. The original "Chinook" was a mongrel; his sire "Kim" was of unknown origin but thought to have St. Bernard influence in his background; his dam "Ningo" was described as "Eastern Eskimo" from Peary expedition stock. Walden bred Chinook to a variety of bitches. Initially they were simply known as "Walden's 'Chinook' dogs," but eventually the idea of making them into a breed took shape.

Walden and the original Chinook

Walden was no financial genius. He readily admitted that his best move had been to marry a wealthy woman, Kate Sleeper. His talents lay in dog handling, adventuring, exploring, and writing. Admiral Byrd systematically milked Walden and Sleeper to help fund his first Antarctic expedition; the 1929 market crash ensued as well. Walden and Sleeper ran short of funds before he returned from Antarctica. Walden lost his famous leader, aged 12, when he wandered away from the camp in Antarctica and was never found. Milton and Eva B. Seeley had been hired as kennel managers with a half-interest in the kennel; Kate Sleeper fell ill and their Wonalancet Farm got into financial troubles, with the result that on Walden's return from the Byrd expedition, he lost the kennel and the dogs to the Seeleys. The bulk of Walden's dogs, therefore, never got to contribute to the ongoing development of the breed; indeed, in later years Eva B. Seeley told people, "there is no such thing as a Chinook." Thus the first major bottleneck occurred for the Chinook "breed" shortly after its inception.

Only three of Chinook's progeny contributed to future generations, dogs Walden had previously given to Julia Lombard's Wonalancet-Hubbard Kennels. "Hootchinoo" was a son of Chinook out of a dam sired by Chinook on a German Shepherd bitch. "Jock" and "Zembla" were also Chinook's progeny out of a Belgian Shepherd bitch. Jock was bred to progeny of Hootchinoo and Zembla, and the breed continued its development from there, with Walden's guidance, by inbreeding on that foundation. Mrs. Lombard called her dogs "purebred Chinooks." In 1940 the kennel, the dogs, and "the breed" were sold to outdoorsman Perry Greene. Walden himself died in 1947 fighting a home fire.

Perry Greene Kennels carried the Chinooks onward until Greene's death in 1963. His wife remarried, to local veterinarian Harold Smead; the couple continued to maintain the kennel and the dogs until Honey Green Smead passed away in 1967. Smead, in mental and emotional difficulties, was declared a ward of the state and institutionalised. Greene's grandson, Peter Richards, stepped in to maintain the dogs, which were sold to a new owner in 1976, who then lost the dogs to defray boarding bills. By 1981 the breed was at imminent risk of extinction; but eleven animals were rescued by four devotees of the breed. Numbers increased from there, still bred from the same foundation of three closely-related dogs.

Pedigree continuity was lost in the Smead period, so that the relationship of today's Chinooks to the founders can not be traced exactly, nor can whole-pedigree Coefficients of Inbreeding be calculated. From the known pedigrees, today's "purebred" Chinooks have COIs of 30% to 47%; doubtless the true whole-pedigree COIs are higher still than that.

In 1991 the breed entered the registry of the United Kennel Club; prior to that, pedigree records were kept informally by Singing Woods Kennels, Harry Gray's Chinook Club of America and the Chinook Owners Association. Shortly thereafter COA made arrangements with UKC to mount a "Chinook CrossBreeding Program" whereby selected Chinooks would be mated to "dog zero" outcrosses from the original constituent breeds or acceptable working sled dog stock, to be followed by three generations of backcrossing to pure Chinook lines. All seemed well at the turn of the millennium, with things nicely on track for Chinook survival, with a solid programme in place to broaden the genetic base of the breed, reduce inbreeding, and add genetic diversity to the gene pool.

A living Chinook Cross male (Tullibardine Holunder B-15)

But Chinook fancier Rick Skoglund incorporated a new club, Chinooks WorldWide, and in 2001 enrolled the breed in the "Foundation Stock Service" of the American Kennel Club. He brought to AKC a database (replete with errors and inaccuracies) of well over 500 Chinooks; this was done without the knowledge or permission of owners of many of the dogs contained in the database. Since then, the question of AKC recognition for Chinooks has been debated steadily among Chinook owners and breeders. Another breed club (the Chinook Club of America, a new club that stole the name of an older one) contested CWW's position, reclaimed the database, and got itself anointed by AKC as "The Parent Club" sponsoring the breed.

Probably a majority of Chinook folk were well satisfied with the UKC registry and supportive of the Chinook CrossBreeding Program. CCA made soothing assurances that UKC was not being abandoned, that dual registrations would be kept up, etc. People assumed that there would be plenty of time for the Cross bloodlines to achieve "purebred" status.

Late last month, though, it suddenly became obvious that there may have been a covert decision to "fast-track" entry of the Chinook into full AKC status. On the 28th of April CCA Director Patti Richards posted to an email list the news that "there are more than enough dogs for the Chinook to move into [the AKC Miscellaneous Class] at this time." Once that move is made, full AKC recognition could occur at almost any time -- and if it does, it seems a certainty that the Chinook Cross dogs and their owners will be left out in the cold. UKC registration would, of course, still be open to them, but it seems a foregone conclusion that the UKC Chinook would die on the vine once AKC recognition occured. At best, there would be a permanent split in the breed and its gene pool.

What is significant in all this (and there is, of course, much more to the story than I can present here) -- the "bottom line," as it were -- is this: a severely-inbred minority sleddog breed is now poised to enter the CLOSED STUD BOOK showdog world of AKC, without the consent, let alone the wholehearted support, of the breed fancy as a whole. And AKC will not even take in the entire gene pool of the breed! The highly-inbred "purebred" Chinook already struggles with hip dysplasia, seizures, shyness, cryptorchidism, dwarfism, anasarca, and eye problems; yet that part of the population most likely to help mitigate these troubles is to be trimmed away and discarded, while a proactive effort to improve the genetic base of the breed will be halted and rejected forever, in favour of more of the tired old "breed purity" racist stuff -- and that in a breed which, given its origins in mongrel stock in the 1920s, can hardly be legitimately called "purebred" anyway! It all seems quite insane to me. A hostile takeover? What the hell else could you possibly call it?

It all leaves me wondering whether something like this might not happen to the Seppala Siberian Sleddog in another decade or so. Somehow, there must be a way to STOP AKC from swallowing up rare breed after rare breed. In 1997 there were 35 breeds enrolled in AKC's "not a registry" Foundation Stock Service, which is depicted by AKC as simply a record-keeping convenience for these breeds, despite the fact that all of them are inexorably headed for full AKC breed status sooner or later. Today AKC's FSS numbers 65 breeds, including my wife's Chinooks. Each one of these breeds has a very small population, for which the closed stud book and hothouse inbreeding atmosphere of AKC is genetic bad news! I DON'T WANT AKC STATUS FOR THE SEPPALA SIBERIAN SLEDDOG -- NOT NOW, NOT EVER. But how to stop this giant AKC amoeba that threatens to swallow all minority dog breeds?

Posted by ditkoofseppala at May 17, 2008 10:55 PM