Mish mash

One of the differences between my team and a top racing team, besides my limited level of experience, is the make up of my team. Dogs from many different backgrounds that are the result of several different breeding programs.

A top team will have more uniformity, because they will probably be related and have certian things in common that their owner wanted to bring out and conciously bred for and selected for.

There are many different styles of mushers and so many different styles of sled dogs.


This is "Cruiser" he is my only purebred siberian husky. His is unregistered though. He is a smaller male, in the 45 lb range. Not particularly fine boned or well angulated. One oddity of his build is that he has extremely wide barrel shaped ribs like a show dog. Siberian huskies from lines that compete in the show ring often have qualities that don't have anything to do with performance. Somewhwere along the line sombody that competed in the show ring but never set foot on a sled decided that siberians need to have wide barrel shape ribs. This is actually false. The most efficient build for athletic perfomance is a narrow deep rib cage and a long back.

However Cruiser is a hard worker and pretty athletic, his odd mix of features points to his mixed show quality and racing background. He has some showlines in his pedigree as well as "Anadyr" and "Sepp-alta" which are racing kennels. He is friendly but also has kind of an independant personality. He is a focused worker and pulls hard.



This is "Fir". He is the fastest dog in my kennel. He is from Terry Adkins breeding. He has a bone structure and hard muscle tone much like a greyhound. He also has a thin undercoat, though lots of long tough guard hairs. He has some tough sled dogs in his back ground from Herbie Nyokpuk on shishmaref island, but He most resembles what Terry refers to as "Canadian sprint lines" which probably do have some type of admixture of sighthound blood like saluki and greyhound, pointer, irish settr and other fast dogs. One thing about him that I notice is different from my other dogs is that he has a loud bark. I notice my more "old fashioned" sled dogs are less noisy and barky.



This is Jack. Jack looks more like an old fashioned sled dog but is actually a throw back. Many of his siblings don't even resemble what many people would think of as a sled dog. Some are solid red or red and white with floopy ears like a lab, some aren't all that thick coated, either. He has a nice plush double coat and wolf like markings. Even though he has a stocky build like a frieght dog, he has hard muscle tone like a hound dog. Hard ripling muscles. His hidquarters are almost like a pit bull. This is his normal build even without conditioning. But conditioning muscles him up more. He is also a pretty fast smooth runner. His angulation is pretty good in the rear and his shoulders and not as well angulated. He has a very bold energetic outgoing personality.



This is Ruger, even though he is an alaskan husky, and all alaskan huskies have some hound blood in the background, I am hard pressed to see any of it in him. He has a thick warm double coat. He has stiff upright ears, he is not particularly fast, though an honest hard worker. He is as strong as an ox but the quality of his muscle tone is different, more like a siberian, not pumped up like a hound dogs muscle.
I have never heard him bark and when he howls he sounds just like a wolf. He has heavy jaw muscles and strong teeth. His natural gait is a rolling "pace".

To me he looks like the original alaskan husky back when they were used not for racing but for carrying mail and running traplines, there are a few details I think are more refined though, he is small, only 55 lbs compared to these "mail dog" type dogs, and his bone structure is more refined and he has a sloping croup and a low tailset. He resembles a lot of iditarod dogs back in the eighties I think.
He is a really happy dog, very hardy and easy to care for, he wolfs all his food down
Tough feet and never had an injury.



Here is Doppler. I have no idea of his background, but he is from Ross Adams.
He is my second fastest dog. He has hard hound muscle tone too and a short coat. He has a very deep narrow ribcage. This is a dog that is very easy to train, he is very sensitive and eager to please. I run him in lead with Jack butb they are total opposites. In some ways he reminds me of a siberian husky but is also very greyhound like. He is very agile and sure footed with really quick reflexes.

None of these dogs are really anything alike other than they are all sled dogs. They all have different builds, personalities and abilities, and I find I am learning alot from them.