January 28, 2006
The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part IV)
The Eva B. Seeley and Lorna Demidoff Bloodlines
THINGS CHANGED as the years wore on, though. Eva B. Seeley had begun her sleddog career by learning to drive a team of Chinooks in the winter of 1929, according to Michael Jennings (page 58, The New Complete Siberian Husky). That same winter she allegedly saw a team of Siberians at the Poland Spring race and decided to become involved with the breed. Seeley leased the Seppala bitch TOTO from Walter Channing and TOTO, mated to Moseley Taylor's leader TUCK, gave birth to the first Seeley Siberian, TANTA OF ALYESKA, on the eleventh of November in that same year of 1929. TANTA was then mated to a shadowy and mysterious male owned by Leonard Chapman and in August 1932 the famous Seeley "foundation litter" by Chapman's DUKE out of TANTA OF ALYESKA was born. The Chinook Kennels breeding programme subsequently moved forward from the base provided by that litter.
Little information about DUKE survives; Dr. Charles Belford used to tell a strange story about his father's repeated requests to view the dog, and the eventual fulfilment of those requests -- a tale that cast doubt on the dog's origins. No authenticated photos of DUKE survive. It seems strange that so little documentation and so much rumour should surround this male who represented the beginning of the Siberian show-dog bloodlines.
Eva Seeley was an inveterate promoter and publicity-seeker, as well as a person driven by the desire for personal power. In both the Alaskan Malamute and the Siberian Husky breeds she strove for control and domination, and in the main succeeded in getting just that. The evolution of Chinook Kennels' concentration on these two breeds is explained thus by Nancy Cowan (whose knowledge of the subject is far greater than mine):
"Chinook Kennels bred all sorts of sled dogs -- Malamutes, Eskimo sled dogs, Siberian Huskies, some Chinook Dogs, and wolf crosses. But Milton wanted to focus upon a dog breed that would represent Seeley's Chinook Kennels to the world as the Chinook Dog had done for Walden. He fixed their focus on the Malamute, telling Short that the Ricker/Seppala already had a corner on the market for raising Siberians. Short liked the Siberians, and after the dissolution of the Poland Spring kennel, there was no good reason Milton could think of not to breed Siberians."
Chinook Kennels under Milton Seeley’s guidance moved in on the high-visibility U. S. Army and U. S. Navy search and rescue business, collaborating with the military and making Chinook Kennels a staging post for collecting and moving sleddogs into training camps and transport groups. The kennel helped with the founding of the Sledge Dog Division for the U. S. Army Quartermaster Corps at Camp Rimini, Montana. It had provided sleddogs for the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition in 1934, was involved in dog supply for the Third B. A. E. in 1940 and for the U. S. Navy's "Operation Highjump" Antarctic expedition led by Admiral Byrd in 1946. Sleddogs were a hard-nosed business proposition at Chinook Kennels. Milton Seeley saw to that. Nancy explains that he instilled in Short the resolution that they had to produce and sell those dogs so that the kennel should be a profitable business. Short's husband Milton died in 1944; Eva did not forget her lessons; ruthless promotion of Chinook Kennels and of her own Malamute and Siberian Husky bloodlines became an inseparable part of the business plan. (The account by Malamute breeder Robert Zoller, published on the Web as The Zoller Files, documents the lengths to which Eva B. Seeley would go to establish and maintain control over a breed.)
Lorna Taylor at first appeared to be an avid dogsled racer. She divorced Moseley Taylor and married Prince Nicholas Alexandrovitch Loupouchine-Demidoff in 1941; as time went by the race trails perhaps meant less and less to her. Increasingly her efforts were concentrated in the breed ring. Make no mistake about it, though — in the year in which BAYOU OF FOXSTAND was born, Lorna Taylor, soon to be Demidoff, and her Monadnock Kennels would definitely have been considered as belonging to the part-Seppala "Racing Siberian Husky" camp. The Jennings book claims a racing career of twenty years for Mrs. Demidoff.
As the 1940s progressed, though, bench Champions began to flow plentifully from the Monadnock fount. Time progressing, Mrs. Demidoff and Mrs. Seeley began to vie for the coveted honour of producing a flashy, impressive black-and-white blue-eyed Siberian who would be able to compete beyond the Best of Breed level in Group and Show competition. At first it looked as though Eva B. had done it in 1949 with CH. ALYESKA'S SUGGEN OF CHINOOK, whose photo headed the Siberian Husky column in the A.K.C. Gazette for many years. But in 1955 the dog was born that definitively capped the rivalry: CH. MONADNOCK'S PANDO, bred by Mrs. Demidoff by the process described earlier.
Founding of the S. H. C. A.
THE FOUNDING of the Siberian Husky Club of America in 1938 was a key factor of the transformation that occurred through the 1940s and 1950s in the breed. Eva B. Seeley was deeply involved in the founding of the S. H. C. A. and eventually became its Honorary Life President. Michael Jennings writes: " 'Short' continued to remain a dominant force in both Malamutes and Siberians until she died in 1985." He also comments: "today these two breeds [Malamutes and Siberians] — although not invented by the Seeleys — are acknowledged to have become what they are largely because of the foundation breeding at this kennel." (References: The New Complete Siberian Husky, pp. 62 and 58.) There is little reason to doubt Mr. Jennings' assertions, except in the case of the original Seppala strain (whose existence as a distinct entity he flatly denies on page 51 of his highly biased book), which owes nothing whatever to any breeding at the Seeleys' kennel. His cautious qualifier, "although not invented by the Seeleys," is certainly correct! The Siberian breed was doing just fine before Eva B. Seeley took a hand in things. A 1938 letter from William Tautges to Dean C. F. Jackson, responding to a notification about the formation of the S. H. C. A., stated:
"My dog, Alaska Kobuk, who was a very fine specimen, died sometime ago. I secured this dog from Julien Hurley, of Fairbanks, Alaska, and I believe that he has some of the finest specimens in America. If you are not already in touch with him, it would be my suggestion that you communicate with him as he can give you some very valuable information in respect to the proper standard as to weight, height, position of ears, carriage of tail, etc."
Ironic indeed, because Dean Jackson was one of Eva Seeley’s faction! Somehow one doubts whether Mr. Jackson took up Mr. Tautges' suggestion.
Julien Hurley, the man who had secured A. K. C. recognition and registration of the Siberian Husky, who had registered the first two dozen A. K. C. Siberians, he who wrote the first breed standard, whose kennel unquestionably sheltered the dominant bloodline of the first half of the 1930 decade, remained in Alaska -- far from the growing centre of Siberian Husky breed development and promotion in New England. Oliver Shattuck, the main representative and exponent of the Northern Light bloodline in New England, was a dog man of the old school, conservative, ethical and cautious. He sold dogs only to a few selected persons. He did not seek power for himself, nor did he cover the ground with his dogs' progeny. He sold breeding stock mainly to one or two others, notably C. H. Young. Although he studded his star male CH. NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK moderately (KOBUCK's A. K. C. master card shows a total of ten matings), he really took little advantage of the head start he had over the Seeleys or the glory that would have been afforded by having the breed's first bench Champion. Indeed, it seems almost as though Julien Hurley deliberately withdrew from active Siberian breeding as the Chinook Kennels ascendancy started to develop.
To be continued . . .
Posted by ditkoofseppala at January 28, 2006 07:04 PM