The process of outward diffusion of the nascent Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed is now well begun. (No, I'm not talking about the fake pseudo-Seppalas from S-L and S-A and the IXXXC... I'm referring here to the real deal, the Canadian evolving breed that has been a-building since 1997.) Up until pretty recently, the real Seppalas have been found only at Seppala Kennels, at least in any significant numbers. Now SK must face the prospect of cutting back and allowing worthy breeding stock to pass its gates into the hands of younger and inevitably less experienced breeders. It is at best a painful process.
Bitter disappointments seem to be part and parcel of the "satellite kennels" scene. There's the guy who tells himself "MY kennel could never suffer from an outbreak of parvovirus!", ignores experienced warnings and loses a crucial litter to the disease. Then there's the fellow who tells himself that Seppalas are so primitive that no attention need be paid to whelpings, leaves a pregnant bitch in her uninsulated doghouse in -30° Celsius weather when her time comes, and one morning finds her attempting to nurse a litter of frozen newborns -- and then tells everyone, "I'm afraid she wasn't a good mother." Or the one whose valuable stud dog runs loose every few days because his owner can think of nothing better than Quick-Links for putting chain tackle together. Or the person who thinks the animal pedigree association that serves the breed is a dictatorship, and decides that a one-member autocracy is the best way to build the breed. Not to mention the various individuals who decide that the rules should not apply to them, only to other people. Or those who decide that stud service or stock purchase agreements are meaningless and that it's unreasonable for the central kennel to expect them to pay for the dogs they agree to purchase, or to return those taken on loan to flesh out their novice teams for a season.
And yet, there is nothing for it but to soldier on. It's either that, or give up on the whole question of Seppala survival. Probably a thumping majority were always in agreement with those who insisted that it was WRONG for me to remove my dogs from the rigidly closed stud book of The Canadian Kennel Club, that I had no right to decide the future of my own dogs, that it was my obligation to provide unappreciated Seppalas to the showdog Siberian Husky contingent forever, even though none of them valued them enough to undertake to preserve the bloodline themselves. Yet to agree with that majority would be to condemn the Seppala lineage to oblivion by assimilation into the showdog breed population.
So, yet again, tiny groups of precious broodstock go to the vet, get their health and rabies certificates, are loaded into trucks, and travel to new locations. Who knows which of these spots -- if any -- will eventually become new stars in the Seppala constellation?
When Markovo Kennels dispersed thirty-five Seppalas in 1975, only ONE of the new owners achieved any sort of permanency or made a major contribution to the future of the bloodline -- and that solitary one-dog purchaser eventually dominated the Seppala world. Not for the better, IMHO. That person laid waste to the fruits of the Markovo rescue programme and set things up for a second try at Seppala extinction.
Still, the Leonhard Seppala strain survives, by the skin of its teeth, in spite of everything, of all the cards in the deck stacked against it. Will it now survive the new dark ages upon the brink of which our society seems at the moment to hover? Or will it even survive the transition to younger hands? These things cannot be known...