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Copyright ©1998, 2003 J. Jeffrey Bragg |
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Copyright ©1998, 2003 J. Jeffrey Bragg |
THE CONCEPT OF ALLOWING NEW GENE INFLOW into an established breed sets the Seppala Siberian Sleddog project apart from conventional breeding programmes. To go outside the founder-defined gene pool of a purebred dog breed is anathema to show-dog breeders and breed mystics who hold that "breed purity" takes precedence over all other considerations. Al Stead (Northome kennels), a breeder of Racing Siberian Huskies, put it this way in response to an article of mine (ISHC Newsletter, Sept./Oct. 1995, p. 21):
"Only purebred dogs whose parents appear in the present stud books qualify as registered Siberians. He [J.J.B.] could possibly open his own registry of sled dogs which he could stipulate as Siberian Huskies. That would not make them so. AKC registered Siberians are a closed gene pool and must stay that way. If we are not committed to the purity and integrity of our closed breed, we should can the whole thing and breed Alaskans."
Obviously for some folks the purebred dog game is the last bastion of socially-approved racism! We believe that genetic health and working dog hardiness take precedence over breed purity. The dogs themselves get nothing but misery out of this Nazi-style "purity." For them it results mainly in weakness and genetic disease. We see no reason why breeders should have to resort to surreptitious outcrossing and falsification of pedigrees when they need to improve performance qualities in their stock or to restore healthy genetic diversity to their animals' gene pool. For that reason, we abandoned the AKC/CKC 'closed' Siberian Husky breed in favour of the evolving Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed! New genes are now a possibility for Seppalas, while people like Al can carry on in their 'closed breed' with no further annoying wake-up calls from us.
THE CREDENTIALS of Terry Streeper's stud dog were impeccable. He had led the Streeper team for several years in demanding competition through difficult races such as the Alpirod. He had sired the then current Streeper leader "Cody." In the 1999 ONAC when I first saw him, Axel Gasser and Egil Ellis were running teams whose entire front end consisted of Hop's progeny on bitches virtually unrelated to him. His temperament and personality were magnificent: friendly, dignified, competent.
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THE PRINCIPLE OF ASSORTATIVE MATING states that a good way to arrive at a desired canine type, avoiding the hazards associated with inbreeding, is to mate two animals that are similar in the desired characteristics but as little related by pedigree as possible. It is obvious that a dog like Terry Streeper's HOP is faithful to the original "Alaskan village dog" type of the 1950s, a type that really could only have resulted from the predominance of Siberian blood, originating from the large amount of Siberian stock that remained in Alaska after the importations of the Gold Rush years. Certainly the dogs in Alaska looked nothing like this prior to the mass importation of dogs from Siberia in the 1910 decade.
IT IS FOR THIS EXACT REASON, too, that we feel the new Siberia
imports are of the highest value to the Seppala Siberian Sleddog
breed development programme. The faithfulness of dogs like SHAKAL IZ
SOLOVYEV to original Siberian type is obvious. Equally obvious is the
fact that they can have no blood relation to the Seppala strain
rootstock for at least the past seventy years (and probably longer
than that)! The assortative mating principle tells us that when such
sires are mated with pure Seppala bitches, we run little risk of
overthrowing Seppala type, because we have chosen our outcross
animals for their conformity to that very type. Breeding back to
Markovo-Seppalas in subsequent generations will guarantee that
Seppala type remains consistent, while the fresh genetic material
gives relief from forced inbreeding and founder effect, increasing
genetic health in our Seppalas.
