Seppala Kennels 'SledDogBlog'

a page for lloppie

THERE IS NOW a new page on the Seppala Kennels website honouring Sepallop, with very recent photos of him with his L-litter progeny.

sepallop

PERHAPS HE DOESN'T LOOK LIKE MUCH. (His photo above was taken last February.) Horse-faced little squirt of a black and white saddle-back sleddog. He has weighed no more than 42 pounds most of his life. Anytime you looked over the sixty or so dogs resident at Seppala Kennels, he's not the one you would be likely to pick out as being anything special.

But he happens to be the best male leader we've ever had, and certainly the fastest. The best sleddogs aren't always the impressive-looking ones. Endurance? He's a gritty little son-of-a-gun who hangs in there no matter what, no matter how long the trail. A certain amount of stubbornness goes with the grit; sometimes we used to call him "Bonehead."

Something else goes along with Llop -- L O V E . The little guy worships Jeffrey and Isa, and all he's ever wanted is to lean against our legs, or rest in our arms, or sleep near us, and be Our Dog. Notwithstanding he was a kennel dog for most of his life, becoming a housepet only in his declining years.

He was born in Spain on the 29th November 1991, shortly after I got back from visiting Carolyn Ritter's kennel in Wisconsin and buying River View's Hurley, Kidron of Spirit Wind, Norde of Sepp-Alta, and River View's Crobar. He was the son of Karcajou's Dreama of Windigo and Hercules of Sepp-Alta, our first Seppala litter "the second time around." He flew to the Yukon in summer of 1993 and learned his trade as a leader on our rough Yukon hinterland trails.

We knew how good he was, but somehow he was so unimpressive we didn't breed from him much. The one Seppala litter he sired, though, contained "Little Lizzy Lineout" Lizaveta of Seppala who bids fair to become the successor to superstar female leader Tonya of Seppala. Lizzy's sister Lara of Seppala after whelping her magnificent D-litter is now in leader training, and looks like another good 'un. The males from Llop's L-litter, Lev of Seppala and Lenin of Seppala, make a wonderful pair of wheelers, and who knows what either of them will sire when the time comes. I wish we had done another litter or two from Lloppie. We tried for one last February but the young female didn't conceive.

And now he's dying of cancer, at just short of age fourteen. Two weeks ago he started to cough and salivate, developed a swollen lymph node under the hinge of his jaw, and found it painful to open his mouth. Yesterday we discovered a nasty big tumour covering the very back of his throat.

Llop marched into the vet clinic and stood firm as a rock, grim and silent as a defeated Cheyenne war chief, while the vet pried his mouth open, shone a light in, and said, "Oh I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do for that." Llop walked out of the clinic with an air of "Well, that necessary bit of foolishness is done now."

He can still eat sloppy mush. He still gets around very well indeed. He sleeps a lot. And he can still lean on my chest and absorb any amount of love.

Damn. I guess in another week or two I'm going to have to say goodbye and help another lifetime friend get loose from a body that has become too painful to live in. Damn. Maybe I've been kennelling for a little too long.

tonya gets featured

TONYA OF SEPPALA is featured as "Sirius of the Week" (Sirius = Dog Star!) on the dog-lovers' website http://www.crazyfordogs.com. These very nice HOME PAGE features allow dog owners to post photos and a short bio sketch of favourite canines. So Tonya gets her "fifteen minutes of fame" (well, actually it's a week!) and the page remains accessible via the "Previous Stars" link on the Crazy For Dogs home page.

What a neat feature for a canine fanciers' site! Thanks very much to Webmistress Terri Hobbs for making it available, and for featuring dear old Tonya!