The three Seppala factions, to make matters worse, were mutually incompatible both in values and in eligibility rules. ISSSC refused to accept Russian import bloodlines; the SSSD Project did not accept percentage-Seppalas; AKC rules excluded both ISSSC and Project stock, though both the ISSSC and the SSSD Project would, in theory at least, accept AKC stock that met their bloodline requirements.
In September of 2005, just three years after the founding of ISSSC, its major participants conducted an e-mail "breeding discussion" that proved, in retrospect, to be something of a watershed for that group. In that discussion a new member, biologist Frank Caccavo, ventured to question the hitherto unquestionable "breed only the best to the best" methodology, writing:
I agree that performance should be the guiding light, but this is an overly simplistic criterion in the absence of a balanced, genetically-sound plan for the future of the breed. For example, when I look around my own small kennel (and others), I see a tremendous dependence on the Seppalta studs Race/Ruffo. The genes of those animals dominate the modern seppala. I think we need to ask ourselves where we go from here? Where do we see this breed in 10 or even 20 years and how do we get there? How do we maintain or even enhance the performance of the breed while at the same time avoiding genetic pitfalls such as homozygosity and the resultant defects? Chris Rose-Anderson has described an appropriate strategy as always “breeding the best to the best”. However, this approach presents problems with such a limited gene pool as is the modern Seppala. I do not have any good answers.
Guru DW responded that he "totally believed" in the best-to-best breeding strategy, and also "totally believed" in "avoid homozygosity and genetic drift." He went on to remark that the problem was that there were "not enough bests" in the ISSSC genome, that the population was too small, that best-to-best would lead to genetic pitfalls and that mediocrity-to-mediocrity would lead to performance deterioration. He concluded, "It appears that we are doomed!" He then remarked that the Alaskan husky breeders "get away" with best-to-best breeding because of their large population, and suggested that the only answer was to "borrow bests" from the Alaskan husky genome.
Most of the last days of Sepp-Alta's breeding history was taken up with breeding and proving the progeny of an Alaskan husky outcross, "Rasberry." It took biologist Caccavo only about a year to answer his own question as to "where do we go from here"; he switched to Alaskan huskies and dropped his Seppala connexions.
It was also circa 2005 that Willett began energetically publicising the notion that Seppala "performance" should be defined as finishing mid-distance races within 110% of the winner's time. In fact, he proclaimed that they "were not Seppalas" unless they met that requirement! (One had visions of DW's team blinking into and out of invisibility as they lost or made up time on the trail.) To my mind, this was one of the most ludicrous pronouncements yet. After so many years of insisting that the sole purpose and raison d'être of Seppalas should be as mid-distance racing dogs, for him then to declare that they no longer needed to win, but could be content to finish within a half-hour of the winner of an eighty-mile event, seemed quite a turn-about.
It seems as though it should have been enough simply to admit that dogsled racing has "advanced" (if one would want to call it that) beyond the possibility of purebreds being able to retain competitiveness with racing mongrels. The mongrels have all the advantages: unlimited heterosis, a huge pool for selection, no requirements whatsoever beyond raw speed plus sufficient endurance to finish the distance trained for, and a user clientele with sufficiently low ethical standards to support mass culling. Seppalas with their tight gene pool and their low population numbers cannot and should not be expected to be competitive with the flavour-of-the-month racing mongrels, full stop. What earthly point could there be in institutionalising their status as also-rans? Frank Caccavo understood that, and decided that it was a simple matter of horses for courses.
The ISSSC and its guru, though, remained in denial, and focussed their attention mainly upon Seppala/Alaskan crosses as interest in their brand of racing Seppalas steadily waned. The last big flutter for Seppalas was their fourteen-year-old wunderkind Josie Thyr -- who just last month announced to the world that she was selling all of her Seppalas. The ISSSC still hangs on, but at the moment to the best of my knowledge it consists mainly of the Allan and Tamara Berge family.
Posted by ditkoofseppala at August 15, 2010 10:40 PM