"Seppala Siberians"

The descendants of Leonhard Seppala's sleddogs were known for many years as "Seppala Siberians" to distinguish them from other Siberian Huskies. This was uniformly the practice from the 1940s through the 1990s. The use of this distinction is well substantiated by newspaper clippings from as far back as 1940 and from the 1976 privately published book by J. Jeffrey Bragg, whose title was "The Seppala Siberian -- A Breeder's Manual." Breeders such as Cold River Kennels proudly called their pure Seppala dogs "Seppala Siberians'.

Those who claim that registered Siberian Huskies of the Seppala strain have always been known as "Seppala Siberian Sleddogs" have no evidence with which to back up that assertion. So far as can be determined the first consistent known use of that label was in May 1995, in the masthead banner of "Seppala Network", a newsletter, published by J. Jeffrey Bragg during the years 1994 and 1995, billed as "a network of concerned and caring people to preserve, protect and advance the interests of Working Seppala Siberian Sleddogs".

Two and a half years after that first use of the expression "Seppala Siberian Sleddog" it became formally the name of the evolving breed of Seppalas upon the chartering by Agriculture Canada of the Working Canine Association of Canada.