"The more and more I read the more confusing it gets. In my mind technically the first Siberian Huskies brought over by Seppala are Seppalas, aren't all Siberians some what descendants of those same dogs?"
The preceding two sentences are quoted (with permission of the author of that post) from a recent thread on a sleddog forum. The misunderstanding, lack of comprehension, and sheer misinformation found on that thread were breathtaking, right from the title -- "sepella sled dogs"! It was heartwarming to see a couple of notorious "Racing Siberian Husky" authorities talking through their hats on subjects about which they knew nothing (notably Seppalas and dogs in Siberia), letting their ignorance shine forth for public inspection.
I would like to attempt to dispel a little of the fog. Doug Willett, to give him credit, tried to intervene and tell them what the problem was, saying that it came down to semantics, that people were throwing words around carelessly, and that some people apparently thought the meaning of "Siberian Husky" to be so broad it could encompass almost anything. He certainly was correct! Back in December 1995, in "Seppala Network," I wrote an editorial, "Siberian Husky -- The Mystic Name." Well, the people who believe in the mystic name are still around, and they still don't get it.
To start with, let's look at this notion of a "breed"; there is really no such thing in nature as a breed. Taxonomists (scientists who study the classification and interrelationships of different life forms)define a hierarchy of classifications: kingdoms, phyla, subphyla, classes, orders, families, genera, species, subspecies and varieties. (And sometimes, arcane intermediate levels between these major levels!) Taxonomists regularly disagree mightily as to where a given species belongs, whether it's in the same genus as a species that looks closely related to it, or in an entirely different genus. They are sometimes forced by news studies in molecular biology to rearrange things on the family level, or even on higher levels. And as to subspecies -- don't even ask! Arguments about subspecies are a taxonomist's daily bread and butter.
Now dog breeds are not even subspecies -- at best one would be stretching a point just to consider them varieties because there is nothing in nature causing them to be bred as "demes" or local population-groups (the normal situation for varieties), only arbitrary human whims! Most dog-breeders, lacking any scientific or zoological background, seem to assume that their favourite breeds are either species or the next thing to it! Not true. All known dogs are now considered scientifically to be (genus) Canis (species) lupus (subspecies) familiaris. That is, the domestic dog is a subspecies of the wolf species C. lupus.
So the only scientific basis for dog breeds is the artificial imposition of a "pedigree barrier" by man, such that the canine subspecies is further subdivided into arbitrary breeding-groups that we call "breeds." Dog breeds are cross-fertile; their DNA is all part of the wolf-DNA genome; there's no basis for considering them evolutionarily separate, i.e., species. So a "Siberian Husky" or a "Dalmatian" is a human construct, not natural, artificially maintained by the application of a breed standard and a pedigree barrier.
Now, then, let's consider the burning forum question of "Seppalas" and whether they are "Siberian Huskies" or not. We say "Seppalas," and what do we mean by that? It's a man's name. We use it to designate the descendants of some dogs that this man once bred. If we wanted to stop there and not qualify it any further, we would have to include the Bow Lake Siberians and also the 1/4 Malamute 3/4 Siberian dogs that Leonhard Seppala bred in Fairbanks after his return to Alaska in the 1930s. Since none of us who have "Seppalas" want to do that (and since nobody has ever considered those two groups as in a class with his Poland Spring stock), we qualify it a little further. First, we are careful to state that for dogs to be Seppalas, they have to be sleddogs that have always been bred as such. Second, we then specify which dogs bred by Seppala we are talking about. We mention:
All of the foregoing can be reasonably well documented, as such things go. (Certainly much better than, for example, can now be done for the Chinook breed -- they have a hiatus only 3 decades back that causes a surprising number of "open pedigree" lines that can't even be traced.) Those are the ancestors of the dogs that have traditionally been known as "Seppala Siberians" for over seven decades.
Furthermore, the above singling-out and defining of a bloodline can be extended in a very straightforward and simple way, by stating that the Seppala/Poland Spring lineage can be traced thereafter through the breeding of Harry Wheeler and Alec Belford, and from there quite specifically through that of William L. Shearer and J. D. McFaul. It is really the Shearer/McFaul period of the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the early 1960s that defines present-day Seppala lineage, (with a very limited assist from Cold River and later Charles Belford breeding, all from the same ultimate source as the Shearer/McFaul lines). McFaul breeding gave rise in turn to Bryar and Malamak, and Shearer to various minor lines. When the Shearer and the McFaul kennels finally closed, the whole lineage very nearly became lost. Today the McFaul/Shearer genome is defined by ten ancestral dogs from the Markovo/Seppineau breeding of the 1970s, because that was the only pure-strain conduit of the McFaul/Shearer lineage that made it through the post-McFaul hiatus.
If you accept that line of reasoning, then it's simple to say what you mean by "Seppala." Otherwise, it is not simple, it is not straightforward, and there is really no way of saying for sure what is Seppala and what is not.
That line of reasoning was accepted absolutely by the man behind the ISSSC, until very recently when his own self-interest required him to backtrack and suddenly decide that Anadyr (for example) was really 70 to 80 "percent Seppala," contradicting earlier published definitions to the contrary by the same individual. I speculate that the motivation for the turnaround was the desire for the progeny of two recent leaders (stemming from an Anadyr outcross line) to be considered eligible as 93% benchmark Seppalas according to the guidelines established in 2002 with Continental KC. The two leaders in question were about 5/8 McFaul/Shearer ancestry; it would have taken another couple generations of upgrade breeding to produce even 93% progeny. Prior to 2002, the same person was quite firm that 95% was the lowest possible cutoff point, and that if you wanted to be safe, maybe 97% was better. (Reference: "What is a Good Definition for a Seppala?" by Doug Willett) The whole business of legitimising the "back-to-the-boat" calculation of Seppala percentage seems to have been largely a business matter so that "pure Seppala" progeny of these two dogs could be marketed under the Continental KC rules established by ISSSC.
If one accepts that expedient compromise, then yes, of course, one swallows holus-bolus the premise that "all Siberians are somewhat descendants of those same dogs"! Because Eva B. Seeley's breeding was never anything but a minority. ALL Siberian Huskies stem, approximately 65 or 70% at a minimum, from Seppala lines if pedigrees are taken back all the way to foundation.
For a couple of decades, "Seppala Siberians" were not too different from "Siberian Huskies," although as early as 1940 the term was being used to distinguish them from other Siberians. The clueless and the bumsteads of the forums talk as though Jeffrey Bragg were the only person ever to make such a distinction, which is laughable. The "Seppala Siberians" were a recognised commodity thirty years before Jeffrey Bragg ever started talking about them. On the History section of the SSSD Project website, on the Cold River pages there, you'll find a newspaper clipping circa 1940, showing Millie Turner with her leader "Cossack" -- that clipping mentions her team of "Seppala Siberians" in exactly those words.
Today the distinction needs to be made BECAUSE THE SIBERIAN HUSKY BREED TURNED ITS BACK ON ITS ORIGINS AND WALKED AWAY FROM THEM LONG AGO! (One, at least, of the forum participants seemed acutely conscious of that fact.) The founding of the Siberian Husky Club of America in 1938 was the actual turning point. Thereafter, the SH breed became a showdog breed in purpose, goals and intention. By the mid-1960s, the garden-variety Siberian Husky could no longer be considered a "Seppala Siberian" -- the type of dog that was referred to in the discussion of the early teams and kennels, the "dogs that all of you would kill to have in your kennels today." As one who was active in the Siberian Husky breed in the 1970s, I can assure everyone that nobody who knew anything about Siberian Huskies in 1970 would have considered the dogs being bred and shown by Judy Russell, Jack Foster, Kathy Kanzler, Jim Brillhart, Anna Mae Forsberg, and Marie Wamser to be "Seppala Siberians." Nobody! Sleddog function is a vital part of the distinction today, because, despite the public relations efforts of the two largest show-puppy mills to convince everyone that their bloodlines are basically working sleddogs, showdog Siberian Huskies have largely lost that functionality. Seppalas haven't.
So there is no need to be confused. Either the simple definition explained here has validity for you, or it doesn't. Either you agree that Seppala lineage is something distinguishable, and that its latest descendants were the so-called "Markovo-Seppalas" who were 99%+ McFaul/Shearer background. Or else you don't agree, and breed book author Michael Jennings is right that the only difference is that in some lines the name was perpetuated longer, but really all SH are Seppala Siberians. In either case, those who hold either position will have reasons for doing so that seem perfectly adequate to them.
The argument about whether Seppalas are Siberian Huskies or vice versa is pointless, like most arguments on such chat forums. Any canine population is a "breed" if it is subjected to selection under a breed standard and submitted to a pedigree barrier that rules its breeding. The Seppala Siberian Sleddog, today in Canada, is recognised by that country's agricultural authority as an "evolving breed" under Canada's Animal Pedigree Act that governs all purebred livestock breeding in that country. They have been quite deliberately removed from the Siberian Husky stud book, where they were in constant danger of being sunk in the morass of purposeless show/pet breeding. In the U. S. A., many Seppalas are still Siberian Huskies, still a part of the A. K. C. Siberian Husky stud book registry, still seamlessly integrated with that morass. (And then there are the "percentage Seppalas" of the ISSSC, registered only with a commercial for-profit "registry" in Louisiana whose main stock in trade is publicly perceived to be cockapoos, labradoodles and puppy mills.)
The day will come when even the question of the purity of McFaul/Shearer descent will no longer matter, because the pure McFaul/Shearer line is not likely to be able to survive forever on its own. I still have a large number of pure-strain McFaul/Shearer descendant Markovo-Seppalas in my own kennel, but even I will acknowledge that it can't, or perhaps shouldn't, be kept going indefinitely without some fresh genetic input. My own feeling is that the Solovyev bloodline of Siberia-import stock seems to be (for me at least) the only really sensible option for broadening the gene pool and reducing the dangerously-high coefficient of inbreeding now current and inescapable in Markovo-Seppalas (and percentage Seppalas as well). That, at least, is in accord with the practice of Leonhard Seppala and Harry Wheeler (who both used Siberia imports in their breeding), which the cross-straining with the Seeley-derived stock most emphatically IS NOT. The Solovyev stock, moreover, is more of a true, honest outcross than any mainstream SH bloodlines; Racing Siberian Husky lines are even less so, as they are much too closely related to give any relief from the founder inbreeding.) Wheeler, Shearer and McFaul were unanimous in this matter -- none of them allowed any Seeley stock in their bloodlines; Shearer tried it at first, then discarded that line; McFaul discarded his Gatineau stock, which had only a slight Seeley contaminant, when he acquired the Harry Wheeler stock and the Seppala kennel name. Now, ISSSC breeders find it expedient to call cross-strain RSH, Seppalas. Such is their decision, but they cannot claim any backing from Wheeler, Shearer and McFaul for it.
The clueless and the bumsteads on the forum loudly declare that the dogs bred by Willett and by Bragg "are no longer Siberians"! (No longer hold title to "the mystic name"!) Shock, horror! I don't know about Doug, but I have not claimed to be a breeder of Siberian Huskies since 1997 when the WCAC was chartered and the Seppala Siberian Sleddog evolving breed given its recognition as such. I am not trying to deceive anyone about anything! Today's SSSDs are not "Siberian Huskies," but they certainly ARE "Siberian Sleddogs," and that to a much greater and more demonstrable extent than the dogs of the two great show-puppy-mills Kar*****da and Inn****ee! They are bred purely from the descendants of Leonhard Seppala's Siberian sleddogs and modern Siberia imports. You can hardly get any more "Siberian" than that. (The forum's notorious nitwits accuse me of breeding Alaskan Huskies -- the SSSD Project quite publicly and openly, on the record, bred ONE experimental outcross litter from a world-class Alaskan leader stud dog; we didn't like the results we got, and the experiment was taken no further. Three ageing bitches survive from that litter; they have no progeny. The nitwit faction on the armchair forum are misleading everyone and deliberately spreading confusion.)
Well, it's all semantics, as the man says. I have a very clear and simple explanation of what I mean by Seppalas, of what has always, traditionally, been meant by "Seppala Siberians." And in Canada, Seppala Siberian Sleddogs have a very clear and official existence that does not involve percentages, puppy mills, or profit-registries. If they still don't get it, out there on the armchair-musher forums, too bad. A word of advice to those who are still relatively inexperienced in the world of Seppalas -- the forums are NOT the place to go for reliable information on the subject. As someone else said on the same thread, "please please let us be careful how we speak to newbees on the subject"!
Posted by jjeffrey at August 8, 2005 09:14 PM