In a document titled "The Great Seppala Division," Douglas W. Willett, founder and iron-fisted ruler of the International Seppala Siberian Sleddog Club, has outlined details of a new performance standard for grading-up (presumably, although it is not spelled out in the document, of both Siberian Husky and Alaskan Husky crosses with Willett-Seppalas in the ISSSC's Continental Kennel Club registry's "MISC" category).
The Willett document describes the ISSSC upgrade policy as follows:
"It takes you at least 5 generations to get in the ISSSC/CKC purebred category. Where we are liberal is that we allow and encourage you to start the process with something that can run a mile in less than 10 minutes, rather than just looking at whether the dog has a good coat and where he comes from. Our entry policy is constructively liberal in order to improve performance generation after generation."Thus the minimum performance threshold for upgrade candidates has been very simply defined and set as follows:
The ISSSC deserves to be applauded for the liberality of its upgrade policy, which may well prove to be the beginning of a Sleddog Paralympics, breaking new ground by allowing canine amputees and sleddogs with orthopaedic prostheses to participate in dogsled sports and to achieve ISSSC "Seppala" status for their descendants.
It should be noted that the policies in effect may, in certain cases, be considerably more liberal than the statement "it takes you at least 5 generations to get in the ISSSC/CKC purebred category" might seem to indicate. Mr. Willett himself has demonstrated that ISSSC eligible purebred "Seppalas" can be produced in only 3 generations by starting from non-Seppala Siberian Husky bloodlines (Anadyr, for example), having given such status to the progeny of two of his own leaders (Sepp-Alta's Zues/Zeus at Windy Ridge and Sepp-Alta's Griffen at Windy Ridge) whose grandam Ninnis' Calamity Jane was of the pure Anadyr bloodline.
Elaborating further on the performance theme, Willett also explains that the ISSSC concept of sleddog performance "means being reasonably competitive in racing." Nailing the concept down yet further, the document goes on to explain that the Willett performance concept involves finishing "close to" professional racers, and that his current criterion "is to be within 110% of the winner's time."
It is certainly a novel concept for the performance standard of a population apparently completely dedicated to the sole purpose of dogsled racing to be defined as the ability to finish, in effect, no more than one half-hour behind the winner of an eighty-mile mid-distance racing event. The idea of handicapping has never really been a part of the dogsled racing scene, but the establishment of this new ISSSC performance standard may well be followed by demands for its application in the case of ISSSC dogs.