BAYOU OF FOXSTAND

Bayou of Foxstand, Seppala Siberian Husky
BAYOU OF FOXSTAND occupies a unique place in Seppala sleddog history. She was born on the 27th November 1940. At that time the registered Siberian already had ten eventful years of history as an AKC breed behind it. The kennels of Wheeler, Belford, Shearer, Frothingham/Turner, Seeley and Taylor had been in existence for several years. In 1940 Lorna Barnes had divorced her first husband Moseley Taylor and within a year would marry Prince Nicolai Alexandrovitch Loupouchine-Demidoff, giving Monadnock Kennels a celebrity kick-start. In two years J. D. McFaul would begin his long career in Seppala Siberians. In another few years Natalie Jubin would head out to Alaska with two dogs from Chinook Kennels, there to meet and marry Earl F. Norris; together they would found the Anadyr bloodline. BAYOU OF FOXSTAND stood at the turning point of an era in Siberians, bridging the great war that affected the breed so profoundly.
Joe Booth with Siberian Husky Burka of Seppala
Little Joe Booth
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.

Leonhard Seppala with Ruby Derby leaders Jens and Scotty
Seppala with Jens and Scotty
(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.

LYL OF SEPSEQUEL, Seppala Siberian Sleddog ancestor
LYL OF SEPSEQUEL, one of the ten "Second Foundation" dogs of the Markovo period, BAYOU OF FOXSTAND's great-great-granddaughter

In his 1986 book, Doug Willett assigns a Seppala percentage of 81.25% to BAYOU OF FOXSTAND. That 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.

Here is BAYOU'S PEDIGREE for those who may find it of historical interest.

Photos of BAYOU and Joe Booth courtesy Elsie Chadwick, Siberian Husky Archives

SEPPALA SIBERIAN SLEDDOG PROJECT INFORMATIONSEPPALA HISTORY