Part I: Internationality As Seen from the United Kingdom
SIBERIAN HUSKY OWNERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM have recently been heard from, advancing concerns as to whether I. S. A. is "truly international" and suggesting that we have "no European representation or consultation" and "insufficient understanding of the restrictions and limitations" of dogsled sport in the U. K. Mind you, as yet we have no members in the British Isles, so these parties are criticising from outside, fence-sitting. (What else is new?)
Other issues raised included dual registration and eligibility rules for acceptance of Seppala Siberian Sleddog (SSSD) stock. Something is still not clearly understood, or so it seems: the Seppala Siberian Sleddog is now a dog breed in its own right, no longer a variety of another breed (and a showdog breed at that). This is not about Siberian Huskies (SH)! The SH registries of AKC, CKC, KC (UK) and FCI are irrelevant to the SSSD breed.
Ever since the SSSD breed was officially established in 1997, the premises on which it is based have been as follows:
Excuse me, all you good folk in the U.K. (and also in the U.S.A. and Canada) who continue to talk about the Seppala Siberian Sleddog in terms of what you call "dual registration" -- meaning continued registration of SSSD progeny (filial generations) in AKC/CKC/KC/FCI Siberian Husky stud books -- but I always thought that the most basic, irreducible minimum standard for a "breed" of animal was that it should be readily and recognisably distinguishable -- distinct, separate -- from other breeds!
We all understand perfectly that the SSSD breed founders -- the "parental generation" -- came from SH stud books. That does not imply, though, that their SSSD progeny -- the filial generations -- should continue to be registered as SH. A choice must be made. One breeds either Siberian Huskies or Seppala Siberian Sleddogs -- the dogs one's breeding programme engenders cannot somehow be both. You cannot fence-sit indefinitely. A clear dividing line was drawn in 1997 and the source populations were defined at that time: Markovo Seppalas and Siberia imports. The SSSD Project in Canada has bred SSSDs only since then and has no registered SH to offer anyone. That decision was made by the breed founders more than eight years ago, when nobody wanted to know. (The idea of a separate breed was proposed in "Seppala Network" and there was very little response to the proposal, particularly from those who later went on to become the ISSSC.) Those who now wish to participate in SSSD breed matters and organisations must also decide. That decision should be based on principle; decisions based on the convenience of the moment will not do.
The complaints from the U.K. run thus:
To which line of reasoning I might reasonably reply, "Okay, so why are you telling me all this?" The "restrictions and limitations" of the situation described are obvious to me. I do in fact understand them fully. (In fact, the point has already been extensively discussed long before now, by John Coyne and myself.) But I. S. A.'s answer to these complaints can only be, "We are truly sorry about your Kennel Club and your racing clubs, but their restrictions are beyond our power to do anything about. YOU, the sleddog fanciers of the U.K., need to get involved in changing these institutions' rules to reflect current realities better, instead of accepting their status quo and making impossible demands of I. S. A."
Part II: The Dead Hand of the National All-Breed Kennel Clubs
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES a body of English common law developed that was known as the law of "mortmain," dealing with bequests to and purchases of land by monastic orders of the Church "in consequence of which lands became perpetually inherent in one dead hand" which would never relax its grasp. We have an analogous situation in the national all-breed kennel clubs -- AKC, CKC, The Kennel Club (UK), FCI and the rest. These all-breed "umbrella" organisations have taken over the canine fancy in a monopolistic fashion that really can only be compared with the Roman Church of the Middle Ages. Their rule is absolute; their power is vast; there is very little around to check or restrain that power or to review their decisions. Once a dog breed comes into the grasp of their dead hand, it is there forever. These corporate bodies are virtually immortal and highly resistant to change.
When AKC or some other all-breed umbrella organisation "grants recognition" to a dog breed, it "opens a stud book to foundation stock." Typically this "opening" is a very brief affair indeed, lasting only long enough to register a small handful of animals, often all from just a few breeders, or even just a single breeder! As soon as, in the all-breed club's sole judgment, "enough" foundation stock has been registered, the stud book is then CLOSED FOREVER. "Purebred" dogs of that breed are thereafter by definition descended from the handful admitted to the stud book whilst it remained open, and only the descendants of those few may be registered as purebred individuals of that breed.
Consequently the stud books of AKC, CKC and the rest are like a bank account established by an initial deposit of funds; money may be withdrawn from the account, but (incredibly!) no additional deposits are allowed to be made -- ever! What, then, will be the future of that account? Obviously, an ever-declining balance; the account cannot grow, it can only diminish. You say that this is not a fair analogy? I assert that it is, because the closed stud book means that no new genetic material is allowed to enter the gene pool, while the extinction of bloodlines, the disuse of genetically important animals, the loss of genetic diversity through random drift, the loss of diversity through perpetually-repeated cycles of inbreeding and selection -- all of these act in concert to reduce the available "bank balance" of genetic diversity. In this way the "dead hand" of the umbrella kennel clubs also guarantees a DEAD GENE POOL, one that is forever passive, static, deprived of the dynamic balance of healthy heterozygosity that is normally found in animal populations in a state of nature.
In the case of the Canadian Kennel Club's "Siberian Huskie" studbook in 1939, the total number of foundation animals registered was NINE. All of the body of stock initially registered, forty-seven in all, came from one kennel: the kennel of Mr. Harry Roberts Wheeler in St. Jovite Station, Quebec. The other dogs were progeny of the foundation stock, but two of the founders thus registered did not contribute progeny to the Wheeler kennel! It is true that later registrations from the American Kennel Club's Siberian Husky stud book expanded the gene pool somewhat. Nevertheless, the net result of the initial narrow foundation, plus the factors mentioned above, is that the pure-strain Seppala stock that remained available in the 1990s (from AKC and CKC combined) was approximately 91.5% descended from only FIVE foundation animals. (Nor was the mainstream Siberian Husky in much better shape; full pedigree analysis back to foundation of modern show Siberians, if it were possible over the thirty or forty generations of their pedigrees, would show probably at most seven dogs responsible for over 90% of the pedigree lines.)
Yet the Canadian Kennel Club refused emphatically to accept the first Siberia import dog into Canada since the 1930s for registration in its Siberian Husky stud book -- and for no better excuse than that the dog in question (Shakal iz Solovyev) did not have three generations of registration numbers in his pedigree! In that way CKC demonstrated its utter lack of concern with the urgent issue of genetic diversity in a breed that perhaps never had an adequately broad foundation and that certainly by 1990 was in great need of fresh genetic input.
The refusal of the Canadian Kennel Club to register new Siberia import stock was the trigger event that led ultimately to the Seppala Siberian Sleddog as a fledgling new sleddog breed in its own right. Working breeds, more perhaps than most others, need genetic diversity to maintain health, hardiness and selection potential. Yet the so-called "International Seppala Siberian Sleddog Club," when it burst unexpectedly onto the scene five years after the foundation of the breed in Canada, has, just like CKC, stubbornly refused to consider new Siberia import stock as having any place in the Seppala gene pool!
Part III: Just Who Are the Interlopers Anyway?
THE PROMOTERS AND SUPPORTERS OF THE ISSSC have persistently attempted to foster the assumption that the SSSD Project, the WCAC in Canada, and now I. S. A., are unreasonably creating new rules, drawing lines to exclude supposed "non-Markovo Seppala" stock, and in general moving the goal posts to suit our own brief. Nothing could be much further from the truth than that assumption!
Present concerns and enquiries from the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. have largely to do with worries about the eligibility question, not just in one direction -- it cuts both ways! Some are concerned that all SSSDs should continue to be eligible for registered Siberian Husky status in national all-breed kennel clubs -- as we have seen. (Many of them seem convinced that there is something we could do to affect that situation; this is difficult to understand since kennel club refusal to accept Siberia import stock led to the SSSD initiative in the first place!) Others are concerned as to whether the "Seppalas" that they have already acquired from sources other than the SSSD Project will be eligible for WCAC or ISA status as Seppala Siberian Sleddogs.
In order to understand the eligibility question, it is first necessary to understand quite clearly what the SSSD is and whence it originated. The breed designation "Seppala Siberian Sleddog" was first used on the masthead and in the pages of "Seppala Network," a newsletter published by the SSSD Project originators during the years 1995 and 1996. From there it went to a brief to Agriculture Canada published by myself, entitled "The Seppala Siberian Sleddog -- An Evolving Breed in Canada's Yukon Territory." When the Working Canine Association of Canada was chartered in 1997, it was chartered in respect of -- yes, the Seppala Siberian Sleddog, as an evolving breed under Canada's Animal Pedigree Act.
Part and parcel of the documentation that became part of WCAC's Articles of Incorporation were a set of "Breeding Guidelines"; essentially those guidelines provided for two major source populations for the SSSD breed. The "primary source population" was the pure Seppala strain of AKC/CKC registered Siberian Huskies, and that strain was carefully and precisely defined in terms of the ten "Second Foundation" dogs of the Markovo era in the 1970s. The "secondary source population" consisted of the descendants of modern Siberian village dogs, and specifically the Solovyev dogs from Ekaterinburg. The "basic constitution of the breed" was to be animals from the two foregoing groups, blended in such a way that ultimately the original Seppala strain would make up a majority percentage and the new Siberia stock a minority percentage of the blend, without assigning more specific figures. It was emphasised that the two groups sprang from the same original source, but at a temporal interval of some sixty years.
For five years following Agriculture's recognition of the SSSD as an evolving breed, no one questioned the constitution of the breed as I have just described it. There was no storm of protest over the SSSD breed initiative, nor any widespread arguments about eligibility of stock. In fact, there was little or no interest in what was being attempted. It was not until early winter of 2002 that Ms. Lanette Kimball of Sepp-Lok Kennels, having come across the SSSD Project website whilst surfing the Internet, decided that what we were doing was of some interest, and could be imitated in the U.S.A. As she told me at Seeley Lake, MT, in August of 2002, she mentioned the idea to Douglas W. Willett (Sepp-Alta Kennels) and Bob and Tamara Davis (Tay Marr Kennels), who forged ahead from that point to found the ISSSC, entirely without consultation with the existing breed project.
The ISSSC went on to establish its own "founder list," its own breed standard (at first largely plagiarised from my 1976 book "The Seppala Siberian: A Breeder's Manual"), its own website including photos stolen from the SSSD Project website, and an entirely new version of the already much-revised Willett "percentage system" of defining Seppala lineage. The net result of this latest version of the percentage system was to make "percentage Seppalas" of bloodlines that had long previously been considered separate and distinct Racing Siberian Husky bloodlines in their own right (such as Earl Norris' "Anadyr," Anthony Landry's "White Water Lake," Art and Judy Allen's "Natomah," and Deborah Ryan's "Kodiak"). In consultation with ISSSC's sponsor, Continental Kennel Club, Inc., of Walker, Louisiana, ISSSC further decided to allow unlimited upgrading of Siberian Husky/Seppala crosses and Alaskan Husky/Seppala crossbreedings to full "SSSD" status when "Seppala percentage" as calculated by the newly liberalised system reached the level of 93%. No provision was made for Siberia import stock, and later policy decisions of ISSSC not only downgraded the role of pure-strain (Markovo-Seppala) Seppala stock, but also placed an outright ban on Siberia import stock.
Thus the so-called "International Seppala Siberian Sleddog Club," founded five years after the establishment of the breed in Canada, not only set its version of that breed in place totally without consultation with the original Project and its originators, but also decided to operate using an entirely different breed standard and a gene pool that was starkly different to that specified by the original "Breeding Guidelines" document that had governed breed development for the initial five years. Given these facts, one has to ask who are really the interlopers in this breed, who has moved the goal posts, and why the Project, WCAC and ISA are accused of betraying the interests of "Seppala owners" in the U.S.A., the U.K., and even in Canada.
