Seppala Kennels 'SledDogBlog'

beauty among the aspens

WE ARE WELL INTO AUTUMN in the Yukon now; about half the leaves on the aspens and willows are yellow. Today is brilliantly sunny after two days of dark and rain. Isa and I thought this afternoon would be an ideal time to sit in our big exercise yard that encloses a tall stand of older aspen poplars and to give our young Seppalas a leg stretch. So we had a succession of dogs running free in the e-yard: first a mating pair who are nearing the end of their romance -- breathaking in their agility, speed and synchrony as they pursued each other around the perimeter, heart-warming in their graceful, funny courting games. Then, a four-month-old single late-winter puppy and his mother. She (Alana) is a lithe, graceful smooth runner, fast as quicksilver, and her growing son (Echo) couldn't begin to catch her, though he never gave up trying.

Then, finally, The Nine -- our two all-girl winter litters, now seven months old and growing their first adult winter coats. Instead of getting gawky and clumsy as they grow up, these young ladies just go on getting more beautiful. They are all in good flesh, the new coats are smooth and silky.

As they ran 'round the enclosure, paralleling the perimeter fence, or drifted through the aspens, repeatedly something would stop me, my breath caught in my throat with a feeling of wonderment and unfamiliarity. For an instant I would see them as they are, in all their strange semiferal, semidomestic beauty, and think, "What ARE they? They are so lovely!"

How is it that, after so many years of living with and breeding Seppalas, they can still hit me with that feeling of something newly discovered, something strange, beautiful, utterly unfamiliar? Surely it cannot be something that they alone possess -- I'm sure at least a few other breeds, perhaps desert-bred Salukis or Chart Polski, have it, too -- but I suspect this is given to few dog-breeders to experience. This elfin, ethereal and evanescent beauty among the aspens, as nine young Seppalas, no two alike, chase gracefully through the closely-growing saplings in the yellow sunlight of an autumn afternoon in the Yukon.

zeita - the puppy of love

ON BETSY BUSH'S SECOND VISIT to my kennel at Oxford Station, Ontario (that was on the 17th of June, 1973) I was pretty shaken up. I had recognised a soul mate, the sort of person that one can expect to encounter only once in a lifetime. I didn't yet appreciate what that recognition actually meant, and wouldn't for a few weeks. But I had to do something to mark the recognition, and I felt a tiny bit guilty about having sold her XAIRE OF MARKOVO, who was light silver grey with bicolour eyes, when she had really wanted a dark-faced, blue-eyed Seppala so badly. The Z-litter puppies, which really filled the bill, had been too young to leave the kennel at the time of her first visit when Bets acquired Xaire.

We were in one of the log outbuildings where the Z litter were housed in a raised wire pen, when I made a clumsy grab for Betsy and tried to kiss her. She caught my wrist, spun me around, slammed my back against the wire of the pen and told me to act like I had some sense and not to make matters difficult for us. The puppies reached through the wire and pawed at my hears and pulled my hair while I listened to Betsy's lecture.

When she had finished, I turned, opened the pen's gate, reached in, extracted little blue-eyed demon ZEITA OF MARKOVO and pushed her into Bets' arms, saying, "take her, she's yours -- she's what you really wanted." Of course I had an argument on my hands, but Zeitsop was irresistable and, in the end, she flew to Saskatoon with Betsy LeSueur Bush. I soon received a letter thanking me deeply and sincerely for Zeita, "the puppy of love," containing the photo shown above, and recounting the exploits of Xaire and loving li'l Zeitsop.

Li'l Zeita's in the pedigree of my super-leader TONYA OF SEPPALA, her paternal great-grandam, and in the pedigree of my dear little girlfriend LIZAVETA OF SEPPALA one generation further back. Maybe that's where all that love comes from . . .

the fireweed turns

IN THE YUKON autumn begins when the fireweed that has bloomed and produced seed pods starts to show its cottony seed towards the bottom of the plant, and the fireweed in shaded areas that hasn't made it into bloom suddenly starts to turn deep red. So, it's getting to be autumn now . . .

thirty-two years ago

THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO I arrived in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, after a grueling 1910-mile drive over two and a half days in a 3/4 ton blue GMC 4wd pickup truck, laden with my worldly possessions and 14 pure Seppala sleddogs. I had started out from Oxford Station, Ontario, where I had been kennelling for three years under the Canadian Kennel Club name of "TADLUK, Regd." I discovered Seppalas only after I already had a thriving "dual-purpose" Siberian Husky kennel using a wide variety of bloodlines.

An old dog named DITKO OF SEPPALA had undertaken my sleddog education in October of 1969. I was a slow learner, and old Dit died (in July 1971) long before I had learnt what I had to learn. He left a number of hard lessons impressed on my soul, but it took years for it all to come out in practice. The move to Saskatchewan in August 1973 marked my final commitment to Seppalas exclusively. I left the other Siberians behind me then, to go in another direction; even as the Siberian Husky breed had itself left Seppalas behind, to go in another direction -- to the show ring and the abandonment of the working trails of their sleddog ancestors.

I can still remember vividly every dog that was on that truck with me. SHANGO OF SEPPALA had pride of place, as the senior male at eleven years' age. LYL OF SEPSEQUEL and FROSTFIRE ANISETTE were there. HAAKON, HELEN and HOLLY OF MARKOVO were on board. Also NUTOK, NORKA, NERA, NYURA, WAWA, ZAKI, ZAZA, and XAROS OF MARKOVO. Fourteen dogs, carrying with them a unique genetic legacy from the Nome goldfields and the frozen wastes of Siberia. Most of them, along with others that Betsy and I bred in Saskatchewan, are shown on these MARKOVO pages of the SSSD Project website.

I wish that the fates had allowed all fourteen to pass their genes down to Seppalas of today! NORKA, WAWA, ZAKI, ZAZA and XAROS' bloodlines were not conserved properly. In the mad rush for middle-distance racing success of the Willett years, genetic breadth and conservation were ignored. The Great One has a lot to answer for. So have I. I doubt whether any of us then had as acute a realisation of what a unique gene pool that was, as some of us have today. So much more might have been done towards their conservation.

The Saskatchewan venture did not last. It was too harsh an environment, and the money ran out. Betsy Bush and I had to sell the Markovo dogs, largely to people who just didn't understand or appreciate what they were getting. It took us many years to reach a position, financially and emotionally, in which we could once again pick up the torch for Seppalas and once more engage in the battle for their survival.

(These reminiscences will probably be continued piecemeal over the next several days. It seems like a good season to look back and reflect . . . )

hornets and bears

IT HAS BEEN an odd summer in the Yukon! We had a month of May that was clear as a bell and virtually rainless. Then we got a lot of sustained moisture thereafter. Now, in August, usually a cool month here, even though on clear nights the temperatures are falling nearly to freezing, in the daytime the mercury soars up to around +28 Celsius, which is HOT for us!

There are HORNETS everywhere! The bush resounds with a constant loud hum like a power substation. The keynotes for the summer seem to be hornets, mushrooms, ruffed grouse, grizzly and black bears, and cougars. No kidding. Within sixty yards of the kennel I've seen rotted logs turned over by the black bears, who seem to think hornets are a tangy treat. My neighbour saw a grizzly calmly striding across his field two days ago, and a week ago someone spotted a cougar. Not much of an invitation for a casual stroll in the bush.

The enclosure of mixed spruce, aspen, hillside and sphagnum bog where I have my shack has produced a brood of what looks like about TWO DOZEN ruffed grouse -- the most I've ever seen down there before was six. The exercise yard where we run the dogs in summer has produced a stunning variety of edible mushrooms all summer -- and you haven't seen anything odd until you've watched The Nine (our two all-bitch litters of last January) and their mothers -- eleven Seppala bitches -- all industriously hunting out mushrooms and eating them.

Is global warming going to turn the Yukon into a temperate paradise? I'm starting to wonder. Still, some of the aspen and willow leaves are already turning yellow, the wild rose hips are rapidly reddening, and the fireweed is ready to burst forth with its cottony burden of seeds. Winter will inevitably come.

sleddog legacy online

Well, it was a bit of a struggle to get it all configured right and working properly, but SLEDDOG LEGACY ONLINE is now a reality! What is it?

It's the first real-time, continuously-published online sleddog interest-group newsletter, that's what! For a long time everyone has been moaning about the lack of a newsletter. Northern Dog News disappeared back in the late 1960s. Racing Siberian Husky ceased publication in the 1990s after a 15-year-long run. Seppala Network published six issues over two years. Seppala News lasted for two issues only. It's a daunting task to try to publish a mail-out subscription newsletter, postal charges and printing costs being what they are. People won't commit themselves to pay a subscription price that will actually cover those costs. WorkingDog Web has tried to convince us that RSH still exists online, but one or two articles a year is not enough of an "existence" for most of us, especially since the newsletter is not really distinguishable from the rest of the website.

With two years of experience with MovableType as a weblogging tool, all of a sudden it occurred to me that it could be used quite well in a non-personal context, to publish an online newsletter! It just took some reconfiguring and customisation. This way, many of the difficulties and objections to newsletter publication evaporate: no "deadlines," no "issues" that must be filled with content by the deadline, no printing costs and headaches, no ransom paid to Canada Post. And the news, announcements, and articles go out in real time as they become relevant or ready for publication! Innovative? Well, I think so! I'm not saying it hasn't been done before in other fields, but there's nothing like it at this moment in the sleddog sector.

At first, and at a minimum, it will meet the needs of The Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project, the International Seppala Association, the Working Canine Association of Canada, the three Yahoo! email lists associated with the foregoing, and of course, of Seppala Kennels and Tullibardine Farm Chinooks. But that's only the beginning. We hope to cast a broad net here, appealing to those who are interested in historic sleddog breeds, in sleddog breeding and genetics, in recreational dog driving. The basic idea here is "Sled Dog Central for the competitive racers, Sleddog Legacy Online for all the rest of us." We won't turn down racing news or race results, but the basic focus will be on the non-competitive side of dogsled sport. Jack and Susan Murray have agreed to co-edit this baby, so that we have a three-person editorial board and can cover for one another in the winter months.

The challenge will be to keep the content coming, as always in such endeavours. Maybe the consuming public will help out, and maybe they won't; that part remains to be discovered. But people said they wanted a newsletter. So here's a newsletter! Click on the banner above and go see it!

canada's guide to dogs

FOR SOME MONTHS NOW I've been aware of a website called "Canada's Guide to Dogs." At first I had it confused with Dogs in Canada and its old Dogs Annual. That was wrong! Canada's Guide to Dogs is, wonder of wonders, totally independent of any registries, kennel clubs, or publications. It exists, apparently, to provide an information resource about dogs -- in Canada and worldwide. It is determinedly independent and firmly dedicated to a Neutral Point Of View -- something I have learnt to appreciate through working in Wikipedia.

So it was especially delightful to discover that the Webmistress of CGD, Ms. Patricia Mitchell, was building a "Breeds Under Development" website section supplementary to the CKC-recognised Breeds listings, and that she wanted to do a comprehensive Canada's Guide to Dogs page for the Seppala Siberian Sleddog! I had a lot of confidence that such a page would be done properly, since already Ms. Mitchell had posted one of the best, most comprehensive and fairest explanations of the Breed Registries mess that I've ever seen. Seriously! If you want to find out about ALL of the major "alternative," commercial registries as well as the traditional kennel-club registries, that page is the place to start. She has conscientiously tried to research and cover all of them. And to date, Pat is the ONLY Canadian who has been aware enough to pick up on the fact that the Working Canine Association of Canada is one of the four legitimate canine Animal Pedigree Associations chartered in this country.

After a couple of exchanges of information and comments between Pat and myself, the new SSSD page is complete, and extremely well done, I think. Go see it by clicking on the logo below. And while you are there, give Canada's Guide to Dogs a thorough checking-out and bookmark the site for future reference. The knowledge base there for dog breeders and fanciers is steadily growing. This website will be around for a long time, I hope, and will in future be a force to be reckoned with in the canine web world. Good, attractive web design, integrity and dedication to unbiased information make up an especially potent combination on the web (where sleazy design and stridency seem to be the usual norm).

Keep up the great work, Patricia -- and a big THANK YOU for giving your careful attention to a new Canadian dog breed struggling for survival.

The New SSSD Page

closeness

One of the nicest things about Seppalas is the way most of them seem to seek and to treasure a feeling of closeness with their owners. While seldom engaging in the kind of "here I am, pet me, pet me, pet me!" behaviour that you see in some not-too-well-behaved Golden Retrievers (to pick only one breed of many that will act like that), Seppalas, when invited, will get very close to you and simply relax and bask in your near presence.

Little Alana of Seppala, above, illustrates what I'm talking about in a quiet moment in the exercise yard with Isa. Alana isn't a regular house-pet; she lived in my shack for a couple months this spring while she was busy with her one-puppy litter. She has never been in Isa's cabin -- but just look at that expression of relaxed enjoyment -- it's obvious how much she likes just to "be with" . . .