Siberia Imports

Siberia imports are the ultimate foundation and the ideal of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed. The dogs imported from eastern Siberia by Charles "Fox" Maule Ramsay, Leonhard Seppala and others were about as good as several thousand years of natural selection in the world's harshest subarctic environment could make them. They were neither bred nor selected for dogsled racing, yet they immediately set a record for the All-Alaska Sweepstakes trail that has never been broken.

The history of the registered Siberian Husky has only been one of steady degeneration from the original Siberia imports. Despite the admiration expressed in print for these dogs by Siberian Husky fanciers and racers, neither group would be likely to give the original imports kennel room today. Both groups have bred away from the original dogs in favour of their own misguided notions of conformation and the results speak for themselves.

The two 1930 Siberia import males Kree Vanka and Tserko still account for over 40% of the pedigree lineage of pure-strain Markovo-Seppalas today. The close connection with the dogs of eastern Siberia would undoubtedly have been maintained and strengthened in the McFaul/Shearer bloodlines had it not been for the fact that the Soviet Russian government closed Siberia to external trade during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989 restored access to eastern Siberia. Unfortunately, in the interim, breed clubs such as the Siberian Husky Club of America had committed themselves to the dogma that the dog show Siberian Husky was a faithful copy of the "Chukchi Sled Dog" and that there were no such dogs left in Siberia. It is true that misguided government programmes had resulted in the decimation of native sleddog populations during the mid-twentieth century; but those did not encompass their total extinction.

In summer of 1992 J. Jeffrey Bragg and Isa Boucher acquired an authentic Siberia import male, Shakal iz Solovyev from the breeding of Sergei Alexandrovitch Solovyev in Ekaterinburg, Russia. This and other Solovyev stock have become an integral part of the genetic restoration plan of the evolving breed, the Seppala Siberian Sleddog.