UNQUESTIONABLY THE MAJOR Seppala figure of the post-Markovo era, Douglas W. Willett has been enormously influential in the history of the breed. He began his career in Seppalas in 1975 at the close of the Markovo period, buying XAIRE OF MARKOVO from Betsy Bush near the end of the Markovo dispersal. At the time as proprietor of Alta Kennels he had been trying to run a team of mainstream Siberians that included red-coated show stock; he thought the plain-looking Seppalas overpriced at $250 - $400. XAIRE, harnessed and hooked up immediately on arrival, finished her first training run in lead position and stayed there until she was replaced by her half-brother BEOWULF. Spayed due to a pyometra infection that followed a mismate injection, XAIRE never produced a litter. Nevertheless, as Doug writes in his 1986 book, "the heart of the Sepp-Alta breeding program became the Bragg Markovo dogs or descendants of those dogs."
UNFORTUNATELY FOR the descendants of those Markovo dogs, Willett was an inveterate experimenter. His book admits, "the initial breedings at Sepp-Alta Kennels were exploratory in nature." That exploration never ceased, in the event, and Willett continued to use the Alta suffix for his more experimental breedings. Willett's first Sepp-Alta breeding was to mate NATOMAH'S KAMIK, a mixed-lineage midwestern US racing dog, to ROSIE OF MARKOVO (whom he apparently leased from her owners Rose and Tom Weir). Then in 1978 he became involved with Lev Idels in Alberta, who had imported the Russian bitch ZEYA, a Moscow Kennel Club registered West Siberian Laika (a hunting breed). The first Sepp-Alta W-litter (suppressed from the listing in his book) was born in November 1978, sired by MARKOVO'S MARAQ out of ZEYA the hunting laika. The progeny were apparently poor sleddogs; from that time Willett was determinedly negative about Russian imports. Then in 1981 came KODIAK'S LAYLA and KODIAK'S LILY, mixed-lineage racing Siberians that were half White Water Lake strain, one quarter Malamak, and the rest mixed eastern-Ontario/New England breeding. SMO-KI-LUK'S SERYA, another Natomah, entered the Sepp-Alta breeding programme in 1981. Then in 1982 the J-litter (also omitted from his book) was bred from KOMET'S CINDER, a half-Zero bitch -- despite the fact that Willett has always been an outspoken detractor of Harris Dunlap's "Zero" bloodline.
WILLETT'S SEPP-ALTA BREEDING CONTINUED in this vein; due to his policy of omitting "experimental" breedings from the published record, we can only guess what proportion of his output consisted of Markovo-Seppalas. (In 1996 he claimed 38 "Bragg-pure" Seppala litters, another 25 to 30 "Willett-pure" Seppala litters, but would not put a number on the Alta and other experimental output.) By summer of 1991, he was explaining to the editors of Racing Siberian Husky newsletter his latest breeding strategy, involving a cross of a male from the SMO-KI-LUK's SERYA line, bred to a bitch, GRAY SHADOW, whose background was described by DW as "Utah backyard breeding," the cross then bred back to ASH OF MARKOVO! This produced a big male named ROCKY OF ALTA; Doug said at that time, "ROCKY may become the outcross to the pure Seppala strain that I have been trying to find for the past 15 years."
WHAT WAS THEN A 15-YEAR SEARCH for an ideal "outcross" has not yet ceased even today. That was demonstrated by Doug's promotion of what he calls "the Oakey outcross" at the Seeley Lake symposium organised by him in August 2002. "Oakey" -- MYSTICTRAIL'S ANNIE OAKLEY -- was sired by a mixed-lineage part-Sepp-Alta racing Siberian Siberian Husky male, CALIBAN OF KIMBALL, out of a pure Anadyr-strain racing Siberian female, NINNIS' CALAMITY JANE. ("Anadyr" was the mainstream SH Seeley-based bloodline of Earl F. Norris.) "Oakey," about one-quarter Seppala, was then bred to Doug's best Markovo- Seppala stud dog, RACE OF SEPPALTA, producing two racing leaders, ZEUS and GRIFFIN. As of 2006 the latest Willett "white hope" outcross was a litter dubbed "the Piranhas" sired by an "old-line Indian dog" racing Alaskan Husky on a Sepp-Lok bitch. So at this point the search for an outcross has gone on through thirty years of ceaseless experimentation, producing a steady stream of mixed-lineage part- Seppalas that, sold to his "satellite kennels," have in turn produced a large population of racing Siberians of very mixed bloodlines that are, nevertheless, popularly considered "Seppalas."
ALL THE WHILE Doug has insisted in print that the Markovo-Seppalas were, generally speaking, his best dogs and the ones that gave the fewest problems behaviourally and genetically. Certainly the fact that his acknowledged all-time top stud dog (RACE OF SEPP-ALTA) was a Markovo-Seppala would tend to back up those assertions. Willett's own breeding stock, at least until very recently, has always tended to remain very high-percentage Seppala, often as much as fifteen or twenty percentage points higher than that of his "satellites." He has consistently sold off his experimental lines as, one by one, they failed to meet his high expectations, and to retain his Markovo Seppalas and high-percentage stock. Yet the net effect of all his experimental breeding, coupled with his satellite-kennel system, has been to render Markovo- Seppalas virtually unobtainable in the new millennium, while creating great confusion as to what actually constitutes "pure Seppala."
DOUG'S RACING CAREER has been, on the whole, enormously successful. His detractors say that he picks his races very carefully, only entering those he believes he can win. It may be true; certainly he has avoided world-class races like the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous or the Fairbanks ONAC that some would say fall close enough to the lower end of his preferred distance range to make attempting them a reasonable proposition. Nonetheless, I feel it is unreasonable to criticise a committed racing driver for picking his shots! (Why enter races you don't think you can win?) At any rate, he claims "over 50 first place finishes in open class racing," a record that anyone should envy. Such a record, though, is rarely achieved without subordinating all other considerations
ANYONE WHO STUDIES THIS WEBSITE closely will realise that Doug Willett and Jeffrey Bragg have deep-seated differences and that we do not get along very well. I cannot help but deplore some of the things that have happened in which he has played a part. Yet it would be quite unfair should I refuse to admit that I greatly admire the man for some of the things he has accomplished with Seppalas. At the same time, I deeply wish that it could have been done at less disastrous cost to the future prospects of those very Markovo-Seppalas that he has always (paradoxically) insisted were his best dogs! The true and authentic Seppalas, now as in 1969, stand on the ragged edge of oblivion, unless enough of us can finally realise and agree that the descendants of the Markovo dogs need to have a secure place in the overall scheme of things.
