The SSSD Project never attempted to promote its Seppalas as racing dogs, feeling that this could only encourage exactly the kind of exploitative breeding and selection that are most damaging to very small tightly-bred populations. I always felt that Seppala breeding needed to be aimed at preservation and conservation first and foremost. Sleddog qualities needed to be maintained, but the kind of breeding and selection required for competitive racing teams could only result in a downward spiral of further genetic depletion -- the last thing the population needed. Therefore our breeding emphasis was always on maintaining a high average level of sleddog capability throughout the entire population, rather than identifying "bests," breeding only those and forgetting about the rest.
Nevertheless, the popular perception of Seppalas as "racing dogs" continued to create problems and misunderstanding of the evolving breed and its purpose. The three-way split divided the (very limited) Seppala interest group into fragments too small for long-term viability. In the circumstances, the details of the disagreements scarcely mattered, because the bottom line was too few people for adequate support of any of the three factions.
As things stand now, there apparently are no more pure McFaul/Shearer Seppalas in either the AKC registry or the ISSSC/ConKC group. Yes, there are still some "high-percentage" animals and quite a few claiming "100% Seppala" status; but none of them meet the pedigree test as pure-strain McFaul/Shearer descendants. (Perhaps there is a handful of old dogs still alive that meet the description, but there is no real breeding population unless someone is running a top-secret maximum-security kennel deep in the north woods somewhere.)
In Canada there are still breedable Markovo-Seppalas (around 20 at Seppala Kennels alone), plus a sizable population of former SSSD Project stock bred strictly from Markovo-Seppalas plus new Siberia import stock. They are bred as working sleddogs -- but not as racing sleddogs, which means that there is very little interest in them from south of the border where the "Olympics mentality" is deeply ingrained. But inasmuch as these dogs are not eligible for AKC registration, there is no reason to think that anyone could "bring dogs from both sides together to bring about a renewed sense of vigour to the Seppala."
In other words, I doubt it would be quite that simple to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Particularly if the people who think they might like to try do not even have an adequate understanding of the history of the whole affair. But perhaps, more likely, all that's at stake here is just opening another bottle of whine on SDC Talk.
Posted by ditkoofseppala at August 15, 2010 11:18 PM