February 05, 2006
The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part V)
The Siberian Dog Suffers a Sea-Change
AT THE PRESENT remove in time it is more than a little difficult to conceive exactly what could have happened at or around the time of the founding of the S. H. C. A. that might have resulted in the sea-change that gradually eventuated in the Siberian Husky breed. Let us recall that it had already existed in the U. S. A. as an A. K. C. recognised breed for eight years before a breed club was founded. Today the true story of the beginning of the Siberian Husky breed is so little known that the S. H. C. A. cannot tell an enquirer which parties initiated the request for A. K. C. breed recognition, or who wrote the first breed standard! In both cases it certainly was not the Seeleys. Further investigation has uncovered an article in the March 1931 A. K. C. Gazette by Fay Clark Hurley stating that the first standard was written by her husband, U. S. Attorney Julien A. Hurley. And the fact that the first two dozen A. K. C. registered Siberians were of the Northern Light lineage is beyond dispute.
What seems obvious is this: that the Siberian Husky, a working sleddog breed already well launched as an A. K. C. purebred, with active breeders in Alaska, Canada and New England, was somehow wrenched off-course by the founding of a highly political breed club almost a decade after breed recognition. Although (perhaps not surprisingly) the means and mechanisms by which this all happened have been forgotten (if indeed they were ever generally known), the final result is clear enough.
Ch. Monadnock's Pando became the image of the mainstream Siberian Husky
The Seeley bloodline became the Siberian Husky mainstream, or to be a little more accurate, the Monadnock successor bloodline to Seeleys’ did. Long before Eva B. Seeley’s death in 1985 the influence of her kennel’s breeding as such ceased to be felt directly, although it remained strongly dominant through Lorna Demidoff’s Monadnock line, as well as through the Anadyr bloodline of Earl F. Norris in Alaska, the Igloo Pak line of Dr. Roland Lombard DVM, and the many minor New England Siberian Husky bloodlines. Nevertheless, although the Seeley bloodline’s direct influence was minimal by the 1960s, early broad dissemination of Chinook Kennels stock meant that numerous other bloodlines counted that stock as part of their foundation.
Lorna Demidoff, another S. H. C. A. founder, went from strength to strength in the show ring. After the chain of outside breedings that culminated in CH. VANYA OF MONADNOCK 3rd, most subsequent Monadnock breeding was "within her own kennel" as Jennings puts it. Her last major acquisition was MULPUS BROOK’S THE ROADMASTER (a son of William Belletete’s IZOK OF GAP MOUNTAIN) from Jean Lane circa 1954. CH. MONADNOCK’S PANDO was born the following year; with Pando and his look-alike son CH. MONADNOCK’S KING, the Demidoff kennel swept headlong to success in Group and Best in Show competition, to four Specialty Show wins and five consecutive Best of Breeds at the premier Westminster show. Pando became the image of the Siberian Husky breed in the popular mind, aided by the above "visualisation of the standard" illustrated with his photograph. Monadnock’s complete domination of the Siberian breed lasted until the current Innisfree dominant line took over. (Show enthusiasts will object with some degree of reason that this is a gross oversimplification of show bloodline history; but the details of exactly how the show bloodlines dominated the breed do not affect the overall outcome.)
The Jacques Suzanne bloodline had a strange fate. Suzanne had an odd reputation as an eccentric and a teller of tall tales. His breeding, based from the outset on the progeny of a single pair of dogs and endlessly inbred thereafter, was carried on for many years. As late as 1970 there were still dogs of his pure bloodline in New England (GYPSY QUEEN, owned by the well-known show breeder Eunice Moreno, was one) and there may still be such, with every pedigree line going back to POLAIRE x DARKA. If so, they would be a tiny handful of dogs only — an insignificant footnote to the general Siberian population.
Harry Wheeler drove dogs until the late 1940s when the demands of his business became too great; he passed his remaining stock on to J. D. McFaul in 1950, who shared it out with Bill Shearer. Shearer himself closed his kennel in 1956. Cold River kennels closed that same year. None of the Seppala kennels had made any effort to achieve a power base in the Siberian Husky breed or to achieve public exposure and sales of stock via the show ring. Their interests always lay in working or racing sleddogs.
Judge Julien Hurley’s Northern Light kennel appears to have registered no stock born any later than 1933 (a handful of Northern Light named animals born in 1939 were bred by Col. Norman Vaughan). Nor did C. H. Young or Oliver Shattuck breed past the same period. By the time World War II began, the once numerous and dominant Northern Light bloodline was no longer much in evidence.
To be continued . . .
Posted by ditkoofseppala at February 5, 2006 02:37 AM