I have just been reading one of Mr Bragg's extensive articles and it struck me that there is a possibility that the dogs we have based "The Breed Standard" on might very well not have been the best dogs that existed at the time. Would the natives not have kept their best dogs to continue the breed as they knew it and sold the rich foreigners dogs that were good, but not quite as good? I am not denying that the dogs are outstanding, but with those formative years long past now, how can we say with absolute certainty that the best dogs were imported. If these dogs were not the best, what made them not the best? Was there known defects? Did the seller sell them as a dodgy second hand car salesman might sell a more than questionable car?
On the other hand, the dogs could have been sold in perfectly good faith and the very best of stock. It could have been that they wanted the dogs to be exported as an advert for future business.....?
Cam

  I see you've found your spoon again Cam
Suz

So you reckon Indian Village dogs are they way to go then, Cam?

Aren't they the same questions you have to ask if you are importing dogs now ?

When you've made your time machine and popped back to find out, let us know the answer, will you? 

Yeah, I guess they are. But the implications of there being a problem or let's say the dogs not being the best have a greater impact back then. There were a limited number of dogs that we based a breed standard on. If these dogs were not as intended, then, is the standard wrong? That is a kind of backwards statement I guess, as the standard IS the standard whatever it was based on. And with such a small number of dogs to start from it only served to compound any inherent problems with the few dogs that were used to breed on from. Inbreeding has it's place to strengthen characteristics, but this is both true for good and bad characteristics. It might be that the bad characteristics are less obvious, or didn't occur untill a later stage, when the dogs may have been shipped on or culled.

Yes, I think I know what you mean. How can we be sure what we get is A) a Siberian B) in good health C) has good conformation D) good working attitude without knowing / seeing the dog and its ancestors in close and frequent proximity. But, how can we be sure that these are true of some dogs here in the UK? There are unscrupulous breeders everywhere. Although it is easier to see parentage in this country it is still no guarantee.

It would be interesting if a large scale DNA study was carried out on all sibes resident in the UK. And the results cross referenced and published.

Would introducing modern Siberian dogs into the gene pool be a bad thing? For the dogs, not for the registered breed?

Cam

The concept of a breed would never have existed. The dogs would be bred purely for function and as that function was ultimately the survival of the owner I would imagine a lot of care was taken when selecting mates.

Given that these dogs don't appear to have changed much over a long period of time before being labelled a "Siberian" you can assume that the husbandry skills of the natives allowed them to select for function very well, and as they were not constrained by the need for a peice of paper could use any available dog.

It would be interesting to know where breeding dogs came from and how/if they were traded. Would there be something like gypsy horse fares, where dogs were regularly traded and/or mated or did the breeder own most of the dogs.

Are there any dogs left in siberia doing as they were intended?
Thought the russians killed them off, if you were going to open the gene pool or introduce new dogs to benefit the breed why not go the whole hog and use some of lance mackey or mitch Seavey's dogs, at least they have a proven background.
Would our dogs still be siberian huskies if that were to happen ??

No they wouldn't be.

That's why Bragg's project to reintroduce "genuine" Siberian stock to his registered "purebred" Siberian huskies had to go ouwith the KC cartels and have its own registry and its own classification as Seppala Siberian Sled Dogs.

He did an outcross mating with his best Sibe bitch to Hop, an outstanding Streeper leader. According to Bragg, the resulting litter was a major disappointment - neither meeting his expectations nor exceeding the abilities of their parents and not, in his opinion, even being decent sleddogs.
Doug Willett recently tried the same experiment - and judging by the fact that the resultant yearlings were all for sale, he seems to be of a similar opinion of the success of that.

I wouldn't particularly want to utilise Alaskans as part of a Siberian gene pool widening experiment.
Respected figures such as Al Stead and Bob Chlupach are on record as saying they think there is still better performance available from the Siberian, as is.

Bear in mind, that of all Leonhard Seppala's dogs, only a handful from his kennel were ever registered with the AKC. He chose not to - despite being involved in getting the "breed" onto the AKC's books.

I think L. Seppala made it pretty clear that Togo was his favourite dog. 

Unfortunately, the qualities that made Togo such a great dog are not covered at all by the breed standard of any of the big KCs.

Still, as long as a dog LOOKS as if it could pull a sled, that's all that matters... 

Cam, if you do get any luck with your time machine it'd be great if you could arrange to borrow Togo for a bit, just to see how he'd do at a dog show.

AJ.

Judging by a lot of this year's critiques, what a dog that could pull a sled looks like differs wildly from one person to another. 

Actually, the phrase "looked like he could work all day" ...."looked as if he could pull a sled all day" or similar always seems to be written down by allrounders who have never actually driven a team. I really want to ask - "how do you know???"

I'm interested - which of Togo's qualities aren't covered by our standard? Is it just attitude you are talking about, or is there anything physical?

"I never had a better dog than Togo. His stamina, loyalty and intelligence could not be improved upon. Togo was the best dog that ever traveled the Alaska trail." L. Seppala, 1960.

Oh well - my lot fail royally on one of those three....... 

Stamina in spades, far more intelligence than is good for them, loyal only to their own deeply selfish desires!

Go on,  I double dare you   

hi peter
 been having a look at doug willets site it looks like he has 6 seppala/alaskans in what he calls his retirement team, 2 of these are advertised as for sale and the 3rd dog for sale arcticsepp ape is a 3/4 seppala 1/4 alaskan, apes father articsepp wiki one of the dogs from the first outcross was used on seppaltas seabiscuit. he would appear to think these crosses were good enough to use in a second breeding as part of the experiment, yet he decided to use the dog wiki whereas he describes arcticsepp whitey as the best of the 1/2s that he bred
 arcticsepp ace is also 3/4 sepalla/1/4 alaskan from the 2nd breeding and is listed in 2009 dogs. another dog listed is arcticsepps eve 3/4 alaskan/1/4 seppala but has no pedigree info. i wonder if one of the first out crosses was bred back to an alaskan, maybe even the father. she could also be from some other combination nice looking dog tho.
 i think i'm starting to confuse myself now so heres a link to doug willlets site check out 2009 team.
  http://www.seppalta.com/
 great site aswell.
 one thing i'm a curious to know would these dogs be elligible to be registered onto the seppala dog registry.
  mick