In summer 2002 all of that ferment of discussion bore fruit in the form of a "Seppala Symposium" hosted in Seeley Lake MT by the arch-guru Doug Willett. Doug invited me to attend, at first via a third party and subsequently by direct mail correspondence. It was billed as a friendly get-together to "discuss the possibility" of a separate Seppala registry. The reality was something else. At the symposium DW and his lieutenants unveiled a fait accompli, a done deal: the International Seppala Siberian Sleddog Club and its brand-new affiliated "SSS" registry hosted by the Continental Kennel Club in Walker LA, a then-popular puppy-mill and poo certificate mill. A new website also appeared -- with Jeffrey's photos on it -- and the ConKC sold coffee mugs and teeshirts at the Symposium, also with one of Jeffrey's photos on them -- all used without permission of the author and copyright-holder. When I blew the cover on that move at the symposium and held up one of the teeshirts before the symposium group of forty people, DW arose in his wrath from the table at the front, lunged, and physically assaulted me. Well, at least that put paid to the pretenses of unanimity.
The ConKC Chief Operations Officer Mark Harrell attempted to patch things up. He and CEO Michael Roy actually visited Seppala Kennels for three days in the winter of 2003, were taken for dogsled rides by SK teams, and we agreed to try to work together for the good of Seppalas. This despite the fact that there was already an existing SSSD animal pedigree association in Canada, and that neither ISSSC nor ConKC had made the least effort to contact the SSSD Project or to ensure any harmonisation of eligibility rules, breed standards, etc., between the original Project and the copycat USA effort. Nevertheless, I worked closely with Michael Roy to try to arrive at some kind of compromise that would let the Project participate in the ConKC registry. There was only one ISSSC member, John Coyne from the UK, who would agree to liaise and to correspond with me about the details. In the end I wound up working just with Mike Roy and Mark Harrell. Every time Mike and I thought we had something worked out, DW would sail in and bust it up, threatening Mike by saying "sixteen breeders will leave your registry if you make these changes." Even so, we came pretty close to agreement, but finally the whole thing foundered when ConKC refused to offer a parallel club for Project people and insisted that ISSSC would have to be the only breed club. ISSSC for their part absolutely refused to allow any kind of distinguishing endorsement for Markovo-Seppala stock, and also refused to recognise anything bred from the new Siberia imports. It didn't help when Mark Harrell left ConKC, as he had been my best communication link. In the end, the effort to find grounds for cooperation resulted only in an impasse.
Thus I wasted a full year of time and effort trying to achieve a functional unification of the Project and the ISSSC/ConKC complex. DW and his bunch were convinced that they and they alone had the right to make decisions about Seppalas. They continued to ridicule me publicly on their website and email lists. And they asserted that their interpretation of Seppalas was the only one worth considering.
The ConKC registry continued to absorb US "Seppalas," many of them only vaguely of Seppala lineage. DW's "percentage system" was rigged to overstate actual McFaul/Shearer Seppala content in a big way, by "rounding up" at each generation, aiming at getting as many dogs as possible to "pure" SSSD status. In the end DW proudly confessed (to a German internet group) that the percentage system was "just a gimmick." But his gimmick played an important role in the recent history of Seppalas in the USA! Because so many animals were "rounded up" to 98%, 99% and 100% Seppala status, and because "Markovo-Seppala" was deliberately made a dirty word in ISSSC circles, the distinction between part-Seppala and pure-Seppala was entirely lost, quite quickly, in the first decade of the new millennium. Since few knew any longer the difference between pure-strain and high-percentage stock, soon no further pure-strain breedings took place, although the few remaining nearly-pure individuals were always extolled as having a "great pedigree." (There is not much excuse for this having happened; it is easy enough to distinguish a pure Seppala pedigree, because every single pedigree line will go back to one of the ten "second foundation" dogs of the Markovo/Seppineau period in the 1970s: Ditko of Seppala, Duska of Seppala, Vanka of Seppala 3rd, Shango of Seppala, Mikiuk Tuktu Tornyak, Lyl of Sepsequel, Moka of Sepsequel, Frostfire Anisette, Malamak's Okleasik, and Willi-waw's Gale of Cupid. But that distinction has been lost altogether in a wave of fake "100% Seppalas.")
At that point a three-way divide became institutionalised, in which there was the original SSSD Project in Canada and its WCAC association, the ISSSC/ConKC breakaway group, and a small continuing AKC Siberian Husky faction.
Posted by ditkoofseppala at August 15, 2010 11:48 AM