Main Entry: misgiving
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: uncertainty
Synonyms: anxiety, apprehension, apprehensiveness, distrust, doubt, fear, foreboding, hesitation, mistrust, premonition, prenotion, presage, presentiment, qualm, reservation, scruple, suspicion, unbelief, unease, worry
"Finally!" I thought, as I finished reading a document titled "Seppala Evolution" just published on the ISSSC's website by Director John Coyne, "finally somebody down there has started thinking seriously about the future."
Let me briefly summarise that article (which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in legacy sleddog breeds generally -- not Seppalas only, as it applies in principle to minority breeds in general). John tracks Seppala history in terms of what he calls "k-generations" (kennel generations), ten-year periods of influence exerted by individual breeders. He points out that "throughout the 90 year history there have been only one or two people of each human generation who have been the driving force that has kept the Seppala alive," and remarks upon "just how fragile the breed's existence has always been." John goes on to explain how high the turnover is in dogsled sports, citing a study which found that only 12% of those who began the sport were still actively involved after four years, that not one of those who bought dogs in the 1975 Markovo dispersal has continued breeding Seppalas other than Doug Willett, and that of the Seppala kennels mentioned in Doug's 1986 and 1992 books, only two are still active.
John's article mentions the formation of the International Seppala Association, comments that it "will need to aggressively recruit dedicated and committed members," correctly interprets the nature of the Internet presence created to support it, and justly remarks that "the challenge will be to transform this virtual interest into reality."
I'm happy to hear these remarks, especially coming from an ISSSC Director, for two reasons. First, they demonstrate that someone, at least, on their Board is capable of looking objectively at the realities of the current situation and of recognising that the original SSSD Project and its organisational extensions actually exist and will not simply vanish with a wish. Second, they clearly utter to the Project and to anyone who supports it a challenge to sustained action, and a warning that the future is far from guaranteed.
The article includes the obligatory overview of ISSSC's three-year life span, though not in any detail. It is interesting to note that some of the matters John pinpoints for future effort -- specifically "making the Seppala breed more widely known and...educating people about the unique characteristics of this breed and the value of keeping it vital and useful," as well as creating an environment to foster widespread interest in Seppalas -- are fields in which ISSSC has fallen far behind the efforts of Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project. ISSSC had nothing to do with the creation of most of the material now generally available on the web with respect to Seppala breed identity and characteristics, for example the various online encyclopaedia articles on the breed. Nevertheless, John is correct in identifying this as an area of crucial importance to the future of Seppalas.
Also discussed is an "annual Seppala race" (in Idaho, not surprisingly) which he holds out as an event in which "all Seppala breeders, whether they be ISSSC, AKC or ISA followers," may presumably participate. (I wonder whether such open participation would really be the outcome, given that the race would be mounted on ISSSC's home turf.) I don't really think that John's conclusion, that such a race would "demonstrate the value of their specific philosophies for Seppala survival," is necessarily a logical one. Survival is one thing, performance proving is another. This is old stuff that has been gone over frequently in the past: no matter how many times it is repeated that racing is the only way to prove sleddog performance, the statement remains untrue. There are other ways to prove performance and no one is under any obligation to submit stock to ISSSC's judgment in this regard nor to accept their dictum that the only legitimate proof is DW's narrow style of racing.
I can most heartily concur with this sentence from the conclusion of the article: "the challenge to all of us is to produce the dogs that will be the ancestors of those needed by the next generation." That is really the essential point -- not all this discussion of the relative merits of various ways and means, or of the different organisations supporting them. Without the dogs themselves, all of this is just so much "blah, blah, blah."
The posting of this article on the ISSSC website may be something of a watershed. Heretofore ISSSC events have always left the impression that as far as ISSSC's original organiser is concerned, it's "my way or the highway" with no room for differences of opinion, let alone dissent. When ISSSC co-founder Bob Davis finally felt obliged to disagree with the Master a year or so ago, it was the highway for him, founder or not. ISSSC Director John Coyne obviously has certain misgivings, qualms, reservations, anxieties, apprehensions or worries. So does Jeffrey Bragg, among them being whether John will be forced to take the highway himself. The future of Seppalas is, in any case, far from a settled thing in the current environment.
Curiously enough, at least to judge from some of the other posts to the "bulletin board" of the ISSSC website, the one person in all this who does not share those misgivings is Douglas W. Willett. He seems content to post adolescent cartoons and collages (his most creative effort was removed from the site as soon as the other Directors found out about it), to continue his attempts to destroy the credibility of the SSSD Project through ridicule; to mislead, to generalise and to pontificate in a way that grows progressively more woolly and incomprehensible as he grows older. Some of his recent articles are written in such a way that few can understand what he is getting at. One can only hope that, despite the heavy autocratic hand of The Great One, eventually more thoughtful heads will prevail in ISSSC. John Coyne's article is at least a move in the right direction.
-- Op-ed opinion by J. Jeffrey Bragg