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Copyright ©2003 J. Jeffrey Bragg |
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Copyright ©2003 J. Jeffrey Bragg |
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CHARLIE DID BETTER than anyone expected racing his pick-up team, and the three dogs from Shearer were at the heart of his success. The leader TESLIN went back to Lombard eventually, to be replaced by the famous TIMMIE OF GATINEAU. In 1950 Charlie acquired OTTO OF GATINEAU and BRUNO OF GATINEAU from Donnie McFaul, who was dispersing the Gatineau stock at that time, just subsequent to his purchase of the Wheeler kennel stock. Both dogs came from a litter by Donnie's old leader NICKO OF GATINEAU out of STARINA OF GATINEAU, born 3 June 1949. Bill Shearer also had two males, TIMMIE OF GATINEAU and TEDDY OF GATINEAU, from the same litter and was having training difficulties with them. In summer of 1951 Shearer sold the pair to Charlie, who straightened them out and found he had his next bonanza in TIMMIE, who ran single lead on his racing team until the dog was retired in 1960. There are many photos still in existence showing the Charles Belford team with this striking white dog at single lead. TIMMIE OF GATINEAU is found in Seppala pedigrees today through LYL OF SEPSEQUEL; he was her great-grandsire.
ALL THROUGH THE 1950s and early 1960s Charlie Belford raced Siberian teams, gaining a reputation as a major competitor on a par with Doc Lombard and Keith Bryar. Finally in the 1960s the Alaskan village dogs began to show up in eastern racing, spearheaded by the importation of BRANDY by Keith Bryar and of RING and NELLIE by Lombard. In order to compete, Belford was forced to move with the times and switch to Alaskans as well. In 1964, 1965, and 1966 he won the Laconia, NH, World Championship event, with some Siberians still on his team. His racing career lasted into the 1970s.
ALEC AND CHARLIE BELFORD, as relatively little-known as they are today compared to Wheeler and Shearer, had an incredible number of fine Seppalas pass through their kennel and race on their teams. It seems astonishing that they somehow fell short of forming a strong continuing pure Seppala bloodline in the way that most of the other major Seppala kennels did. Certainly it was not because no breeding was done. However, the exigencies of élite level racing competition do tend to impose constraints, and one supposes that these acted more strongly on the Belford kennel than they seemed to do on most of the others, who either never chose to compete quite that single-mindedly, or else passed their careers in the more easy-going racing environment that prevailed in the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Chance, too, plays a major part in determining which bloodlines happen to survive. Today the Seppala Siberian Sleddog feels the absence both of the Belford stock whose lineage might have survived but did not, and of the major bloodline that that lineage might have and should have become.
