Outstanding Seppala Ancestors
Copyright ©2005 J. Jeffrey Bragg

THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF SEPPALA STRAIN there have been outstanding individuals who contributed their genes to the making of today's Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed. There are too many to highlight them all, and photos are available only for some. Here are a few of them!

Scotty -- Leonhard Seppala's Sweepstakes leader

Leonhard Seppala with Scotty and Jens

THIS STRIKING blue-eyed black and white male with the tall, alll-dark ears was one of Leonhard Seppala's main leaders during the Nome Sweepstakes period circa 1915-1916. He is depicted at lead with "Lucky Sweed" in the 1915 A.A.S. identification photo of the Seppala team, and shown here with Seppala and another leader, probably "Jens," in a photo of the 1916 Ruby Derby placers taken from the Ricker book Seppala, Alaskan Dog Driver

Sometimes said to be a Siberia import, Scotty was more probably a first-generation Alaska dog. Early pedigrees state his sire as Bosco and his dam Dolly (the latter a known Siberia import). Nothing more is known of his pedigree than this: Sire, Bosco; Dam, Dolly. His parents would probably have been among the Ramsay dogs. Scotty sired the famous white Julien Hurley leader Jack Frost, who in turn sired Northern Light Kobuck, the first AKC bench champion of the Siberian Husky breed, also a white male, owned by Oliver Shattuck of Alton, NH.

Scotty occurs several times in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th generations of the pedigrees of such contemporary Seppalas as Kolyma of Seppala (who is a striking Scotty look-alike) and her sister Tonya of Seppala. It is astonishing to see the general physical appearance of so distant an ancestor evoked in today's Seppalas, but such is the nature of Seppala strain.

 

 

Foxstand's Shango -- Bill Shearer leader

Foxstand's Shango and Foxstand's Shamus

FOXSTAND'S SHANGO was born in 1940 out of the mighty mating of Millie Turner's "Cossack" Vanka of Seppala II and Sigrid III of Foxstand, the unregistered bitch of Poland Spring stock that Bill Shearer purchased from Charlie Belford, who agreed to sell her only when the price had reached the level of a year's college tuition for the young vet-school student! The mating turned out to be the foundation of Shearer's subsequent breeding programme, and Shango was the essential dog in Shearer's racing team for most of his life, until finally the mating in 1947 of Millie Turner's Jeuahnee of Cold River to Shango's sister Foxstand's Sukey produced Foxstand's Shamus, the long-coated white piebald who became Shearer's main leader as Shango grew old. The two leaders, the old and the young, are pictured here together after a race; Shango is on the left. Both Shamus and Shango were titans of the era of the single lead dog in the 1940s and early 1950s, when most Canadian races were limited to nine dogs.

Shango was the grandsire of Foxstand's Georgia, the Shearer bitch sold to McFaul whose influence permeates Seppala lineage today through the ten Second Foundation dogs of the Markovo era. The influence of the Shearer dogs is often overlooked or discounted today, but Seppalas would not be as we now know them were it not for Shearer's dogs. It is with reason that we speak of McFaul/Shearer bloodlines as the Seppala mainstream after the retirement of Harry Wheeler. Ditko and Shango of Seppala were each half Foxstand. Vanka and Duska of Seppala were one-quarter Foxstand. Lyl of Sepsequel was almost half Foxstand; Tuktu five-sixteenths; and so on.

 

 

Bayou of Foxstand

Bayou of Foxstand in harness

BAYOU OF FOXSTAND was born on the 27th November 1940 and bred, not by Bill Shearer, but by Joe Booth, the handler and trainer for Fred Lovejoy's Siberian team. Joe was on good terms with "The Duchess" Marie Frothingham, Millie Turner's mother. He owned a female Siberian sired by the great Wheeler-bred leader Sapsuk of Seppala, out of Cold River's older leader Rollinsford Nina of Marilyn. Nina came from Oliver Shattuck lines; her sire Kotlik was from Poland Spring and other Leonhard Seppala breeding, her dam Nera of Marilyn had been sired by Shattuck's champion Northern Light Kobuck, whose grandsire was the famous Dufresne/Julien Hurley leader Jack Frost, who in turn was sired by Seppala's Sweepstakes leader Scotty.

Joe Booth bred his Sapsuk daughter, Duchess of Huskyland, to one of the Wheeler dogs owned by Cold River Kennels, Surgut of Seppala. The puppy Bayou of Foxstand was sold to Bill Shearer, who resold her in 1942 to C. S. MacLean and J. D. McFaul along with two males, to start their Gatineau Kennels purebred Siberian breeding programme. Bayou produced seven litters for McFaul between 1942 and 1947. He then sold her to Earl F. Norris, Alaskan Kennels, where she produced two more litters. Few bitches have ever successfully founded two major bloodlines; Bayou did just that, as she was a key foundation bitch to both Gatineau and Anadyr bloodlines.

Bayou has been incorrectly assigned a "Seppala percentage" of 81.25% in the Doug Willett books. The only known element in her pedigree that may not be due to Leonhard Seppala is through Northern Light Kobuck. The Northern Light stud dog and leader Jack Frost was pure Leonhard Seppala breeding; the balance of Kobuck's ancestry is uncertain, but thought to be from John "Iron Man" Johnson's breeding -- and probably from the same rootstock as Sepp's dogs, namely the Ramsay imports. Thus even the corrected figure of 96.1% for Bayou is probably conservative.

 

 

Ditko of Seppala

Ditko of Seppala lining out

DITKO OF SEPPALA was the dog eventually responsible for the SSSD Project, I.S.A. and the entire effort to secure a future for Seppalas as a separate breed. It took many years for his influence to come to fruition and it still continues to grow. Dit was not that well known in his own lifetime. Born the 10th February 1959 at the McFaul kennels, he was bought by Elizabeth M. Ricker Nansen and given to her daughter Bunty, then operator of Snow Ridge Kennels; her mother told Bunty she wanted her to have at least one Siberian that was like the ones she and Seppala had in the 1920s! He became a lead dog for Bunty and remained at her kennel until he was ten years of age. He was then acquired by J. Jeffrey Bragg, then of Pefferlaw, ON, with less than two years of experience in Siberians.

Ditko taught me, as he would have taught anyone, that Seppalas were different. He had a quintessentially Seppala temperament: friendly, co-operative, serene and noisy! He would do anything that was asked, as long as he understood it. The accompanying photo shows him holding the gangline taut, attached to a heavy three-wheeled training rig on a gravel road. (Another photo in the series shows Dit pulling that rig at a flying or extended trot -- all four feet off the ground!) Ditko gradually became the inspiration behind the "Markovo Rescue Effort". Not much is known about his sire, Toto of Seppala, and his dam, Zaza of Seppala; they were just dogs in Donnie McFaul's kennel and team, and Donnie was a quiet, taciturn man not given to self-promotion. Both Ditko's parents were half Foxstand, which no doubt accounted for his heavy standoff coat which, although not long, sometimes (as here) made him look much heavier than his actual 48 pounds.

Ditko was not adequately utilised in the Markovo breeding programme. He sired only one pure-strain litter, the Markovo H-litter, before his death from abdominal cancer on the 10th July 1971. Breedings to Lyl of Sepsequel and Frostfire Anisette had been planned, but at the time I did not know that Seppala bitches often came in season but once a year, in the autumn. I had been in the middle of the move to Oxford Station, ON, when Annie came in season and I acquired Lyl in season; it was not convenient to breed them, and I postponed the job until the following spring. When it came, neither bitch came in heat and by midsummer, Ditko of Seppala was dead.

 

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