Sleddog Legacy Online

Guess who won!

Well, the 2006 Yukon Quest is now history, and good riddance to it. This was definitely one of the long race's most ignoble and ill-starred years. It's to nobody's credit (except that of the military helicopter pilots who flew the risky rescue missions) that several teams had to be airlifted off Eagle Summit and withdrawn from the race. What a shambles. No doubt that will be blamed on the weather, and quickly forgotten. Lance Mackey won, in case anyone hasn't already heard, or couldn't guess. What's interesting is that the official Yukon Quest website had the chutzpah to publish The Lowdown on Run/Rest Strategies" -- no joke! One would have thought they would want to keep this aspect of the race quiet, but perhaps I'm giving credit for intelligence that isn't there.

Read the article quickly -- before it disappears from their website. I've made a text-file copy just in case, because I cannot quite believe that they would come out and explain this matter as clearly as they have done. Surely somebody brighter than the rest will wake up and deep-six that article. If anyone doubted what has previously been printed here concerning winning strategies for the Quest "on the backs of the dogs" -- well, now you have it straight from the horse's mouth.

On the backs of the dogs

The Yukon Quest, "the toughest sled dog race in the world," just goes on getting tougher -- on the backs of the dogs, as always. Although this editor is a committed Yukoner (and all good Yukoners are expected to support the Quest), this is where I'm getting off the bandwagon. Whatever the consequences, this Quest is the one that impels me to say that this is one of the most inhumane of sleddog races I know, and I think that dogsled sport, not to mention the dogs themselves, would be better off if it were quietly terminated permanently.

The Quest has strayed a long way from the days when it was first conceived as a fun event for distance mushers who couldn't afford to compete in the expensive Iditarod Trail race, an "extended camping trip" for local Yukon dog drivers. Money, as it always does, has spoilt the fun for everybody; winning has become everything, and winning happens on the backs of the dogs.

For example: REST is vital to long-distance sleddogs. Like getting enough calories, or receiving meticulous foot care, they can't thrive on the long trail without enough rest. But the trouble is, once competition passes a certain level (and this happened years ago in this instance), there is really only one strategy for winning -- and that is to play fast and loose with the rest/recovery cycle of your team, cutting their resting time JUST to the irreducible minimum. Nobody can be sure exactly where that lies, but when you go beyond it, the entire team quits on you. Without enough rest, the driver says "let's go" and the dogs reply "stuff it."

So guess who's the latest smug player of that game? If your guess is the adrenaline-rush freak, the guy who said that out-of-control wild descent from Eagle Summit was "what we look for" -- Lance Mackey -- then you are right on the money. Mackey's strategic master-stroke is described by the Fairbanks News-Miner as follows: "Mushers usually break the trail from Eagle into three runs, with two rests. His dogs had just one long rest on the trail from Eagle. That allowed him to complete the run in 23 hours, 12 minutes, about five hours faster than previous record runs." The whole story of his arrival in Dawson City is worth reading:

That's not the worst of it all, either. It turns out the trail from Carmacks to Whitehorse has so little snow it's unusable. Race officials have known about this for weeks. Canadian Rangers (who groom the trail on the Canadian side) told them that these are the worst trail conditions ever seen. Race Marshal Mike McCowan stated on Friday that contingency plans have been in place for two and a half weeks. It has been stated that changes have to happen, for the welfare of the dogs. So what's the Quest's "canine welfare" response? You would never guess. The mushers will leave Dawson City as usual, follow the trail 200 miles to Pelly Crossing -- and then turn around, go back through the Black Hills again and return to Dawson City! And that involves traversing King Solomon's Dome twice! I've found no mention in the online stories of the difficulties with teams that are bound to occur on the backtrail -- especially once the dogs realise they are retracing the Dome!

It would make sense to end the race in Pelly Crossing where the good trail runs out. But oh, no! That would blow some drivers' precious race strategies! So the irresponsible faction wins again. Despite the loss of 250 miles of the trail, the Quest will manage a total of 950 miles, everybody's "strategy" will remain reasonably intact, and those who really have a good right to complain, can't talk. I hope Lance Mackey's team quits him cold in the middle of the Black Hills.

This year's Yukon Quest has been such a chaotic mess that they are seriously worried about next year's entry! In my humble opinion, they should use those reasonable fears as an excuse to announce the honourable termination of the Yukon Quest -- before the authorities finally wake up and shut the whole show down on humane grounds, dealing dogsled sport a crippling blow.

Brutal Quest 3

"All's Well That Ends Well" goes the headline of the Fairbanks News-Miner story that relates the resolution of the story of the lost mushers on Eagle Summit in the Yukon Quest long distance race. Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Five mushers and their teams were airlifted off the summit by helicopter after high winds abated. The lost dog-team of Randy Chappel was found, lying down all lined out -- it helped that this time ran without necklines, greatly reducing the potential for tangling in the lines. What could have been a major disaster resolved into just a good scare for everyone, largely by good luck, and the Quest goes on. Minus the rescued mushers Saul Turner, Jennifer Cochran, Phil Joy, Yuka Honda and Kiara Adams, who were disqualified from further participation by race marshall Mike McCowan. Eight of the Quest 300 mushers were also withdrawn from the race. Only six drivers now remain in the 300 event, while the main-event Yukon Quest is down to fourteen competitors.

The Quest still holds plenty of potential for further bad situations, as it's a poor snow year in the north, with lots of exposed boulders and other trail hazards. Also there's quite a bit of overflow, and Yukon River ice is probably quite thin as there has been little hard cold this winter. This year, even more than most, the Quest remains an unsatisfactory event in terms of trail safety and monitoring. As we have just seen, it's too easy to get into serious trouble just through lack of advance information about trail conditions.

Brutal Quest 2

As night fell in the Yukon and Alaska, sketchy and sometimes contradictory reports came from Central checkpoint of the Yukon Quest concerning the events at Eagle Summit.

As far as can be determined (subject to the whole story being reversed or denied tomorrow, because that's the way this story is shaping up), it appears that a total of six dogteams and mushers have now been airlifted from the summit and deposited at the Mile 101 dog drop location. Race Marshall Mike McCowan has described the situation laconically as "out of the ordinary." At one point four aircraft were searching the summit for the lost mushers, including a Canadian military C130 Hercules equipped with infrared sensors.

Although there has been no specific word on this point, it's possible the six rescued teams will be out of the race, having had to accept outside assistance. On the other hand, since they were returned to an earlier dog drop on the trail, they might be allowed to make a second effort at Eagle Summit.

The latest word on Randy Chappel's dog team, lost without its driver somewhere on the down side of Eagle Summit, comes from the Fairbanks News-Miner and simply states that the lost team has "been located" with no further details as yet. A CBC radio interview with another Quest 300 musher, 26-year-old Brent Sass who had been running with Chappel, went as follows (mostly verbatim excerpts from the interview):

"Me and Randy were having a great race. . . I didn't know he was behind me. He came up behind me and went up ahead . . . We got up to the top and it was blowin hard, we couldn't see . . . It wasn't a good idea to move at all, because it was just dangerous . . . We stopped there and sorted out some dog stuff . . . Decided we were going to wait it out . . . We heard a dog bark, all of a sudden this dog team comes over the edge . . . It was Gina [Regina Wycoff, Yukon Quest competitor -- YQ and Quest 300 competitors were on the trail together at this point], she had come up behind us . . . we decided "lets get outa here" . . . We packed up and left . . . We stayed in a close distance and started working our teams down the slope . . . there was no trail . . . As we were workin our way down, all of us had real hairy goes at it . . . One time, Randy was goin down and he lost it, he was goin down full speed hangin onto his sled . . . He tried his hardest but he couldn't hold on . . . and the dog team took off and they were gone . . . We couldn't do anything about it, we had two teams left to worry about . . . He drove the sled of Gina's . . . My dog Silver led us outa there. . . Found a trail marker at the bottom . . . Gina rode with Randy all the way back. . . There was nothin we could do, they were goin 20 miles an hour down that hill. . . We hadda get off that mountain."

Best source of updated information on all this seems to be the Fairbanks News-Miner's Yukon Quest News update-blog. The Yukon Quest website (typically) is late posting any infomation at all and, when posted, it is usually sketchy compared with the Fairbanks newspaper's reports.

http://newsminerextra.com/quest06/news/

Brutal Quest

This year's running of the Yukon Quest is turning into a brutal ordeal for both mushers and dogs, and as we write this, there's a horrendous unresolved situation on Eagle Summit. Late Sunday afternoon both snow AND rain descended on the Summit, creating extremely icy conditions. At this moment, high winds and blowing snow have created whiteout conditions. Snowmobile patrols have turned back; air search planes are grounded.

Quest veterans like Bill Kleedehn who have completed the treacherous descent from the Summit are saying things like, "I'm just happy to be alive." AND THERE ARE FOUR MUSHERS LOST OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. It's hoped they are just bedded down somewhere between Mile 101 and Central, waiting it out. But it gets worse yet. Quest 300 musher Randy Chapelle lost his dog team coming down the summit! He caught a ride with another descending team, but there is NO SIGN OF HIS DOGS, and as we noted, air search is impossible and the snowmobile patrols "don't wanna go there." We can only hope that this situation doesn't turn into a real tragedy. (Veteran Hans Gatt said he would not be surprised if someone got killed up there.)

A few suicidal nuts like Lance Mackey find it their cup of tea: "That's as out of control as I've ever been. It's what we look for." But the dog team that has lost its musher on an icy descent from a 3600-foot summit in blizzard conditions is another matter.

Read the Fairbanks News-Miner's story on this hair-raising situation:

http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~7244~3236540,00.html

The Message of Bayou of Foxstand (Part VI - Conclusion)

Canadian Seppalas — and the Preservation of the "SCOTTY" lineage

Leonhard Seppala at the 1916 Ruby Dog Derby, "Scotty" at right

SEPPALA STRAIN might also have gone the way of Northern Light, but for two crucial events in Canada. First, in 1939 the Canadian Kennel Club recognised the "Siberian Huskie" breed. It appears that breed recognition and registration were actually resisted by Harry Wheeler, but possibly pressure from A. K. C. and the new breed club was placed upon C. K. C. due to the export of Wheeler stock to the U. S. A. For nine years after A. K. C. recognition the breed had remained unrecognised and unregistered in Canada despite the active two-way traffic in sleddogs. During the 1950s, when Turner and Shearer ceased their activity, Seppalas managed to survive largely because J. D. "Donnie" McFaul of Maniwaki, Quebec, had purchased the remnant of Wheeler dogs in 1950, added FOXSTAND’S SUNDAY and FOXSTAND’S GEORGIA to them, and carried on breeding Seppalas in Canada until his retirement in 1963. At that point there was no successor kennel. The fate of extinction that had threatened the strain in the late 1950s once again loomed large. At almost the last possible moment a naïve would-be rescuer arrived on the scene and the "Markovo rescue effort" got under way in the Canadian province of Ontario.

By an odd turn of fortune, included in the stock used by Markovo Kennels to resuscitate the moribund Seppala bloodline was an excellent bitch, LYL OF SEPSEQUEL (her sister MOKA was also used by Seppineau Kennels), whose pedigree had two Gatineau lines and showed BAYOU OF FOXSTAND in its fourth generation of ancestry. Thus the Northern Light lineage carried by BAYOU was preserved in the "Second Foundation" that gave renewed life to the bloodlines of Wheeler, Shearer and McFaul. Also the unique connection to Leonhard Seppala’s 1915 Nome Sweepstakes leader SCOTTY was preserved, which otherwise would have been completely lost to Seppala strain. Due to the overemphasis on TOGO in the 1920s and 1930s, this splendid jet black male’s line was not found in any of the Poland Spring stock that happened to achieve registration, unless SCOTTY was one of the unknown ancestors of such Poland Spring dogs as SMOKY. He could well have been.

SCOTTY is a forgotten hero of Seppala strain. He led Sepp’s team in the years when he was rising to the top of Alaska racing competition, but was entirely forgotten later, overlooked in the hullabaloo over the Serum Run and the New England adulation of TOGO. SCOTTY’s influence was strong in the Northern Light bloodline, inasmuch as Northern Light’s famous white lead dog JACK FROST was sired by him. SCOTTY’s image now graces the website banners of the International Seppala Association, but that is not the only place in which it is found.

In 1979 the Seppala strain breeding of George Mentis in Minot, North Dakota, mated a Markovo bitch with LYL in her pedigree (ZEITA OF MARKOVO) to a Gary Egelston male (MINTO OF SEPPINEAU) out of LYL’s litttermate sister MOKA OF SEPSEQUEL. From that mating was born a bitch, DYNAMIKOS RUBY, who repeated Scotty’s genetic markers of jet black colour, dark earlinings, and a white blaze without eyespots. RUBY in turn gave birth to XPACE OF SEPPALTA, who became a foundation dog in the present-day Seppala Kennels in the Yukon Territory, siring a female SCOTTY look-alike, KOLYMA OF SEPPALA, who perpetuates SCOTTY’s genetic markers in her progeny and grand-progeny today! It seems remarkable that one dog’s genetic heritage can re-emerge after 13 to 18 generations. Nevertheless, today’s pedigrees carry multiple repetitions of the BAYOU line through LYL and MOKA OF SEPSEQUEL. The two sisters together make up over 25% of KOLYMA’s pedigree lines, so perhaps it is not so surprising that she and her sister TONYA throw SCOTTY-type progeny on occasion.

Kolyma of Seppala carries the "Scotty" genetics forward in today's Seppala Siberian Sleddog

Despite his undoubted presence behind present-day Seppala pedigrees and his prestigious status as Leonhard Seppala’s mainstay All-Alaska Sweepstakes leader, SCOTTY does not even appear on the "founder list" so often published by the opportunist organisation that has pirated the name of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog, using it to promote the breeding of Racing Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Husky crosses. But then, the ISSSC is not exactly famous for accurate pedigrees anyway.

BAYOU’s Message

BAYOU OF FOXSTAND was born in 1940, bred by Joe Booth who trained the Fred Lovejoy team, out of Booth’s own leader, DUCHESS OF HUSKYLAND. The latter bitch was born of the mating of an early Cold River leader ROLLINSFORD NINA OF MARILYN to Millie Turner’s SAPSUK OF SEPPALA. ROLLINSFORD NINA OF MARILYN had been bred by C. H. Young, daughter of a Seppala-line Shattuck male (KOTLIK) and a bitch sired by CH. NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK (NERA OF MARILYN). Joe Booth bred his leader DUCHESS to SURGUT OF SEPPALA, another Turner-owned Wheeler sire. BAYOU was thus three-quarters Harry Wheeler background and one-quarter Shattuck breeding, as can be seen from her pedigree.

BAYOU was sold to Bill Shearer who resold her to J. D. McFaul as a foundation bitch for his Gatineau kennels. Valiant little BAYOU did her utmost to pass on her distinguished ancestry and genetics! She must have been an exceptionally dedicated and skilled brood bitch. She gave birth to seven litters for McFaul between June 1942 and September 1947. Resold then to Earl F. Norris, again as a foundation bitch, she had two more litters in Alaska.

Today, so far as anyone knows, descendants of BAYOU OF FOXSTAND through the Gatineau and Anadyr bloodlines carry the only remaining genetic traces of the Northern Light bloodline that was responsible for the first 25 A. K. C. Siberian Husky registrations and the first A. K. C. bench champion, NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK. Although at one time Millie Turner, Lorna Demidoff, Col. Norman Vaughan and others owned or bred to Northern Light dogs, today it is as though the kennels of Julien Hurley, Elsie Reeser, Oliver Shattuck and others who owned Northern Light stock were the losing tribe in some Old Testament battle — all their children slaughtered, all their habitations thrown down, not one stone left standing upon another, their fields sown with salt.

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee" . . .

Consider the Parallels Today . . .

SEPPALA STRAIN itself only quite narrowly escaped the fate of the Northern Light bloodline. The S. H. C. A., its writers and its breeders have often tried to deny the existence or the uniqueness of Seppala strain and have ignored it except when an injection of soundness was needed for another bloodline. The message of BAYOU OF FOXSTAND and her pedigree tell us how easily a respected, valuable, established, numerous bloodline can become lost utterly in the dirty scuffle of dog politics, breed promotion and factionalism. Those who read this article today might reflect upon BAYOU’s message and try to work out its implications in the present. Today we have a unique situation with respect to the Seppala Siberian Sleddog and the effort to launch it as a breed in its own right. This situation, it seems to me, has multiple parallels and resonances in the 1930s and the 1940s. But, not to be tiresome and allegorical, I prefer to leave the reader to discover and to ponder those similarities without further assistance from me.

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 . . .