Last issue, we examined what was known about individual importations of dogs to North America.  In this article, we will look at how these particular dogs were combined to develop the breed now known as the Siberian Husky.     

The best way I know to approximate the number of individual dogs involved in the development of our breed is to start with the dogs brought out of Alaska by Leonhard Seppala, and work backward.  Sepp writes that he took 42 dogs to the Lower 48 in October 1926, and 20 in October 1927 (most likely all of the Siberians he had in Nome.)  It must be remembered that some of the dogs in this second group had been part of the first group as well - Sepp used them to return to Nome in April, 1927.  Of all these dogs, however, only eight are “foundation” dogs - represented in today’s AKC registered Siberian Husky.  They are:

Togo (M)

Harry (M)

Smoky (M)

Kolyma (F) - not John Johnson’s male leader, Kolyma

Nome (F)

Pearl (F)

Dushka (F)

Sonia (F)     

There were two surviving 1930 imports brought directly from Siberia to the Seppala/Ricker Kennel at Poland Spring, Maine:

Kreevanka (M)

Tserko (M)     

There were few additional dogs having significant impact on the breed, the exceptions being Tuck and Chapman’s Duke.  Tuck was bred by Mike Cooney at Nenana, Alaska, and acquired by Mosely Taylor of Boston.  Chapman’s Duke, bred by Sepp, was owned by Cooney before being sold to Leonhard Chapman of New Hampshire.

How many different dogs are represented in these 12 dog’s pedigrees? Obviously, in the case of Kreevanka and Tserko, who knows.  Both were imported from the same Chukchi village (Ryrkaypiy), so odds are they are related.  One must remember that indigenous Siberians castrated all but a few males and killed most female puppies at birth, leaving very few intact males and females in a village for breeding.     

Seppala regularly imported small numbers of dogs to his kennel in Nome - the last documented four arrived in September, 1927 and surely accompanied Sepp to Poland Spring in October.  It may be that Smoky and Sonia, whose pedigrees are blank (unknown x unknown) were two of these dogs.  And what of the other six foundation dogs brought down from Alaska by Sepp?  My pedigrees show a total of 38 known different dogs in those six.  The pedigrees themselves go back only 2 or 3 generations to unknown dogs.     

Chapman’s Duke, as per a letter from Mike Cooney to Short Seeley (original letter is in the SHCA archives) was bred by Sepp and his pedigree adds five more dogs to the list, including Scotty, Sepp’s great leader, for a subtotal of 43 known different dogs.     

Although Tuck was bred by Mike Cooney, there is no documented pedigree. We know Cooney acquired his Siberians from John Johnson, when he, Cooney, lived in Nome, so we presume Tuck to be of that lineage, as Mike kept his line of Siberians undiluted up through World War II.     

What about all the unknowns back a few generations in these pedigrees? Some are probably dogs from the Goosak (1908), Ramsay (1909), and Johnson (1911) imports to Nome.  We’ll never know how many individuals are represented, but we do know the disposition of many of these early All Alaska Sweepstakes team dogs.     

The original Goosak importation in the fall of 1908 was not many in number - the 1909 team had 10 dogs on it.  There was a record of a litter by a bitch owned by Goosak in November, 1908 (7 males, 1 female), but no record of the sire (there were lots of loose dogs in Nome).  Goosak traded ALL of his Siberians to Captain Charles Madsen in 1910, for passage back to Siberia for himself and his family.  Madsen subsequently combined the best of these dogs in 1911 with John Johnson¹s dogs to make up the Madsen/Johnson entry in the 1911 AAS.  (See disposition of John Johnson’s dogs below).     

The Ramsay/Olsen importation of 40 - 60 dogs in the summer of 1909 was done with the goal of winning the 1910 All Alaska Sweepstakes, not setting up any type of permanent breeding kennel in Nome.  Ramsay entered three teams in the 1910 AAS - the one driven by John “Iron Man” Johnson won; Ramsay himself was second, and the other team, driven by Charlie Johnson (no relation to John J.) was 4th.  After the completion of the race, he gave the two Johnsons the teams they had run, sold his own Siberian race team to Captain Crimmins of Nome, and never raced again.  He had left Nome for good by 1912.     

There is no doubt that most of the dogs imported by Ramsay were neutered.  As mentioned in Part I, it is well documented that almost all males were geldings, and few females were raised at all.  Evidence of this fact - John Johnson’s 1st place 1914 AAS team was composed of almost all the same dogs he ran in 1910, with a few 1911 imports added in.  The 1914 Nome Nugget reports of this race repeatedly mention the fact that the team’s average age was quite old.  Obviously then, during the time period of 1910 - 1914, Iron Man had done little, if any, breeding - he had nothing to breed with!  Further, it is known that after the 1914 AAS, Johnson took his team to California for the 1915 Panama - Pacific Expo in San Francisco, and the dogs were not heard from again.  Many of the dogs in the dog pavilion were for sale.  Due to their age, most were probably sold or given away in California.  John Johnson never raced again after the 1914 AAS, except for a short exhibition race in Truckee, California in January 1915 (he won it.) He later became a deckhand on a trading ship plying the Bering Sea waters.     

The Crimmins team (Fox Ramsay's original team) was entered and raced in the 1911 AAS, but did not finish.  This team did not race again after 1911, and its disposition is unknown.     

Charlie Johnson kept the team of Siberians given him by Ramsay, and ran them in the 1911 and 1912 AAS.  This team was acquired by Dr. A. N. Kittilsen, a long time Nomite, and was entered in the 1915 AAS.  After that, it¹s disposition is unknown.   (Both of the above teams were probably disposed throughout the Nome area due to the advancing ages of the dogs.)     

In 1913, when Jafet Lindeberg (one of the Pioneer Mining Company co-owners) offered to acquire dogs for Roald Amundsen’s ill-fated polar expedition of 1914, the dogs were collected around Nome by Victor Anderson, an employee of the mining company.  These dogs, some of which were intact, were assigned to Leonhard Seppala, a company employee, for training.  We know the names of at least 14 of these dogs as they comprised Sepp’s 1914 AAS team (which did not finish the race).  Sepp states in his autobiography that he was given 15 dogs to train for Anderson.  Some of these dogs were purchased from one Bill Webb, a Nome butcher.  He was a fan of the Siberian dog and had acquired several, including a female or two, directly from Siberia via various fur traders.  We also know that of the dogs Sepp had that were Siberian, many were young (probably first generation offspring of imports).  Some of these 15 dogs are in our pedigrees, some are not.  As this is the earliest known group of Siberians that we can positively identify in our present day lineage, it is a very important group of dogs.     

By 1918, virtually all of the Siberians in Nome were in Sepp’s kennel. He had, by this time, a very active breeding program based on the original dogs as well as other small importations from Siberia.  Sepp and Mike Cooney were good friends and did trade dogs.  One would hope some of the unknowns are dogs that Sepp acquired from Cooney, thus adding more of the 1910 Markovo importation via John Johnson into Sepp’s stock.  Cooney had by now moved to Nenana, where he established a freighting business, taking dog teams up to the Kantishna mining district.  The bloodlines represented by Cooney’s dogs, except through Tuck, are unfortunately gone.  One should mention that Earl Norris’ first Siberian - Penny - was obtained from Mike Cooney in 1934 while Earl was a young man still in Idaho.  This dog, however, is not represented in the pedigrees of the current Norris Alaskan/Anadyr Siberians  or any other registered Siberian.     

Thus, it can be stated with much certainty, that all of today’s stock are direct descendants of Sepp’s dogs brought to the lower 48 in 1926 and 1927, Duke, Tuck, Kreevanka, and Tserko.     

We are fortunate that Leonhard Seppala was an experienced dog man.  The stock he acquired, and the dogs he bred, were the best available to him. Although our gene pool is not large, the dogs used as the foundation of our breed were outstanding examples - dogs that excelled both as long distance work teams (Sepp operated from Nome as far out as Nenana and Fairbanks on a regular basis) and racing dogs (Sepp raced regularly in the Nome area).  The finest of these dogs made their way with him to Poland Spring, Maine, where the breeding was continued.  Eventually, Kreevanka and Tserko were blended with the original Seppala dogs.  These two imports of 1930 were excellent specimens of the some of the finest Siberian dogs to be found.  Olaf Swenson, who brought these dogs back, was himself an excellent “dog man,” having spent miles behind native dog teams in Siberia, particularly with the Chukchi.     

And through Tuck, although not as influential as some of the other foundation dogs, we know that we have at least some of the genes that were present in the awesome 1910 All Alaska Sweepstakes team of Iron Man Johnson, a team that set the all time All Alaska Sweepstakes record for the 400+ mile trail (even Rick Swenson, in the 1983 75th anniversary race, was 10 hours slower than the 1910 Siberians!).

So, what are our dogs?  Koryak, Kamschadal, Iukagir, or as we so often think, Chukchi?  Actually, our dogs are all of these.  I like to think our dogs have inherited the best traits from all the strains of Siberian dogs, thus preserving the characteristics that made up these great athletes.  The ‘husky’ add-on is, of course, unnecessary, and if anything, our breed would be better labeled with the original Nome moniker Siberian ‘Dog.’     

And speaking of athletes, it may come as a surprise to many fanciers of the breed that there are still Siberians in some working kennels that are but 8 generations removed from those 1930 imports, Kreevanka and Tserko.  I have 3 in my yard alone - still a relatively undiluted gene pool, bred for working, and not much changed from the original dogs.  The proposed, but defeated, 1998 standard revision represented a bold attempt by the Siberian Husky Club of America to return to important aspects of the original 1930 standard, which no doubt described the best working dogs of the day - dogs on Sepp’s undefeated 1929 team, such as Bonzo, Sneegruk, Smoky, Sepp, Bijou, Silver, and Nurmi.  I would encourage the serious observer of the Siberian to contemplate the following statement by Dorothy Macdonald, conformation and events judge, concerning the breeding of working dogs:  “As a dog owner, the only thing you really owe your dog is good care.  You don’t owe him a show title, or even a working title.  But if you start breeding, you owe something to the breed.  Your perspective must change.  You should require yourself to do what’s best for the breed, which means breeding for function. You should be doing both show and performance with your dog or not use him for breeding.”