with Fred Lovejoy's
BURKA OF SEPPALA
BAYOU was bred by Joe Booth, handler and trainer for Fred
Lovejoy's Siberian team. He was on good terms with The
Duchess, Marie Frothingham. He owned a female Siberian sired
by the great Wheeler-bred leader SAPSUK OF SEPPALA out of
Cold River's older leader ROLLINSFORD NINA OF MARILYN. NINA
had a pedigree that was packed with early sleddog history,
most of it unknown to most people today.
NINA was bred out of Oliver
Shattuck lines. Shattuck had some of the earliest registered
Siberian stock in New England, from Poland Spring stock and
from the bloodline of Judge Julien A. Hurley, Northern Light
Kennel, Fairbanks, AK.
(1916 Ruby Dog Derby)
NINA's sire KOTLIK was by YUKON (unregd.) out of RIGA (unregd.).
YUKON was sired by TEX, a dog Shattuck had bought from the
Gunnar Kaasen tour team (which was owned by Leonhard Seppala
and consisted entirely of dogs from Sepp's breeding), out of
AMMORO, a Poland Spring dog sired by Seppala's old leader
TOGO out of ROSIE (one of the 1925 HARRY x KOLYMA progeny, a
sister to BONZO, TOSCA and CHENUK). RIGA was by FROST out of
BELLE, both of them Poland Spring dogs.
NINA's dam NERA OF MARILYN was
sired by Shattuck's Champion NORTHERN LIGHT KOBUCK, a white
male who was the first AKC Bench Champion of the breed, a
dog who created permanent animosity against white Siberians
among the hangers-on of Chinook Kennels by roundly defeating
his Seeley competition to gain the coveted first
championship of the breed. KOBUCK's grandsire was the famous
Dufresne/Hurley leader JACK FROST, who was a son of SCOTTY,
Leonhard Seppala's leader in 1916 when he won the Ruby Derby
(photo at left). NERA's dam, TILLIE, was bred by Shattuck by
TEX out of AMMORO, a sister to YUKON.
Joe Booth bred his bitch, named DUCHESS OF HUSKYLAND, to SURGUT
OF SEPPALA, another of the Wheeler dogs owned by Cold River Kennels.
The puppy BAYOU OF FOXSTAND was sold to Bill Shearer. In 1942 Shearer
resold her to C. S. MacLean and J. D. McFaul along with two males
(FOXSTAND'S SAINT and FOXSTAND'S SKIVAR II) to start their Gatineau
Kennels breeding.
BAYOU produced seven litters for McFaul
between 1942 and 1947, four of them to SAINT, one to SKIVAR, one to
Harry Wheeler's leader BURKA OF SEPPALA II, and one to a son of
SAINT, TZAR OF GATINEAU. He then sold BAYOU to Earl F. Norris,
Alaskan Kennels, where she had two more litters. Few bitches have
ever successfully founded two major bloodlines, but BAYOU OF FOXSTAND
did just that.
In his 1986 book, Doug Willett assigns a Seppala
percentage of 81.25% to BAYOU OF FOXSTAND. This is incorrect. The
only non-Seppala element in her pedigree is through NORTHERN
LIGHT KOBUCK. KOBUCK's grandsire and great-grandsire was
JACK FROST, who was pure Leonhard Seppala breeding; the
balance of his ancestry is thought to be from John "Iron
Man" Johnson's breeding; thus KOBUCK was three-eighths known
Seppala ancestry. When this is figured into BAYOU's
background, the result is a Seppala percentage of 96.1%,
since all her other ancestors are Wheeler stock or
Shattuck-bred animals from Poland Spring or other Leonhard
Seppala sources.
This in turn affects the
Seppala percentage of LYL and MOKA OF SEPSEQUEL, inasmuch as
BAYOU was their great-great-grandam. Their sire was
MALAMAK'S EGO, whose dam was GAGNON'S RUBY, whose sire was
RUKI OF GATINEAU, one of BAYOU's progeny by BURKA OF SEPPALA
II.
Re-calculating the percentage for the Sepsequel litter using the revised figure for BAYOU gives a result of 98.816% Seppala percentage, if that matters at all -- and it does, because for years Doug Willett has used his own figure for the putative impurity of LYL OF SEPSEQUEL as a sort of benchmark for "conservative" Seppala purism. His figure of 97.7% for LYL must now be revised upward to 98.8% -- raising the benchmark, too, one would suppose!
Personally -- I'm proud to have BAYOU OF FOXSTAND in my dogs' pedigrees. She was a remarkable bitch. She touched in one way or another just about the entire early history of Siberian dogs: Seppala, Johnson, Dufresne, Hurley, Shattuck, Ricker, Wheeler, Shearer, Lovejoy, Booth, Cold River, McFaul -- and she ended up in Alaska with Earl Norris, having come full circle! Even today in Markovo-Seppala litters we get little grey saddleback bitches that look quite similar to the above photo of BAYOU OF FOXSTAND. I hope we always shall.
