TONYA OF SEPPALA appears frequently on the SSSD website. There are good reasons for that! To begin with, Tonya lay curled up at my side within arm's reach throughout the entire initial site-building process, which took about 500 hours of work. I could never have managed the job without her quiet, faithful companionship. She has now become rather famous on the web, and has become a symbol of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed.
I CHOSE TONYA to be my companion when she was still a nestling puppy. She was born on 1 November 1995, a winter puppy. Old Dreama seemed to be failing at that time and I knew I would soon be needing a new sidekick. In the whelping box RIVER VIEW'S SPRITE had a large litter, mostly white pups, but this one little black maniac at three weeks' age caught my attention as she her way to dominance of her brother and sisters.
I took her away from her littermates and began trying to civilise her. She usually slept in the sleeping bag with me at night; it was a cold winter. As a puppy she had an odd, distant, demonic look about her. At three months she became so stocky-looking that in jest I called her "my little show puppy." She was harness-broken at three months and immediately demonstrated that she was no show dog. In a little purple puppy harness, hooked to a piece of snowmobile track, with a twenty-foot line on her collar, she was too much for me. I couldn't keep up with her; she took off like a small rocket, just about pulling me flat on my face.
Winter passed and summer arrived. Tonya played in the exercise yard with her sire Xpace and from a stocky little show-puppy had turned leggy and gawky, earning her the sobriquet "Tonner the Twig." From a little black pup she was turning into a handsome black and tan saddleback. Over the course of the summer I worked with Tonya on the bicycle, paired with experienced leaders like SEPALLEO, SEPALLOP and her mother SPRITE. All of her sleddog training was also leader training; I doubt that she has run more than twenty cumulative miles in any position other than lead, throughout her career. As I worked with her, I found that Tonya was a natural double leader -- she had to have someone to race. (Hooked at single lead, she would lose all her fire and enthusiasm.)
AS TIME PASSED I began to notice that no matter what team she was hooked with, Tonya would usually improve the overall time by around five minutes or more over the course of an eight-mile run. She reinforced the efforts of my good leaders and became the usual co-leader of SEPALLOP, my best male leader. For instance, we had thought of the Z-Litter (by SHAKAL IZ SOLOVYEV out of NORDE OF SEPP-ALTA) as a "trundle-along" team when led by their usual pair of ZAR OF SEPPALA and ZIRCONIA OF SEPP-ALTA. I got a surprise when I first hooked Tonya and 'Llop ahead of the Russian team -- they were actually as fast as any of our other teams! Tonya taught them how to move out, and eventually led them to a trail record in training. Tonya always loved and admired the Russians, who were a year ahead of her; she appeared to enjoy leading the Z-litter with 'Llop.
While Tonya was growing up we had temporarily lost our thirty-mile distance trail. When my neighbour Tony Kopp and I cut a new trail to re-connect to the thirty-mile Mud Lake Trail for the winter of 2000, the long trail was a new world to Tonya. She quickly mastered the challenges of the hinterland trail and became my preferred leader for long runs.
WITHOUT QUESTION TONYA was my all-time best leader. Now as a thirteen- year-old "senior citizen," her days in harness are over. But Tonya was always much more than just a leader. She also proved, like her mother, to be an excellent brood bitch; in November 2005, a couple of weeks after her tenth birthday, Queen Tonya presented us with her final contribution, two distinguished "princes of the blood royal" -- PRINCE IGOR OF SEPPALA and PRINCE IVAN OF SEPPALA. For practically her entire life she was my personal companion and chief "Girlfriend." Long ago she learned to heel on leash and began to go everywhere with me, though she never did particularly enjoy the mild bustle of downtown Whitehorse. She adored my truck, though, and would happily sit in the driver's seat with her chin on the steering wheel, on guard for hours, when the vehicle was parked downtown.
Since we moved the kennel to Rossburn, Manitoba, Tonya and I have had a new relationship. In late fall of 2007 when I had to return briefly to the Yukon, I left Tonya and Lizzy with my new wife Susan, thinking to spare an old dog an arduous 3000 km. trip. It was the wrong thing to do as far as Tonner was concerned -- she felt abandoned, and my well-intentioned action confirmed her lifelong suspicion that I was not the most dependable of people. For the last year she has kept me pretty much at arm's length, dominating the living-room sofa, but sometimes pointedly getting up and moving over when I sit too close to her! I accept her distance as a quirk of her old age.
It isn't easy for me to describe Tonya properly or to explain the position she holds at Seppala Kennels. It all comes out superlatives and sounds like mere hype. What to say about the dog who seems to have it all? This much, though, I must say: Tonya exemplifies for me the quintessential Seppala. In each generation there seems to be one Seppala who sums up the race in a unique way. Once it was DITKO OF SEPPALA. Much later it was Dreama. Now it is Tonya. I do my best to enjoy her to the fullest and to appreciate what I have in the present moment -- because I feel pretty certain that this is a once in a lifetime experience. Somehow I doubt that I'll ever have another all-round superdog quite like TONYA OF SEPPALA. Ton-Tonamera, Noble Lady, Gorgeosa, thanks so much for everything. Although you grow ever more aloof as you age, still you like to drape your head and forepaws over my ankles. When the awful day finally comes when you leave me, how will I ever get along without you?
