After 100 years, the husky still reigns

By Doug O'Harra
Daily News Reporter
February 23, 1997

In many ways, the evolution of Iditarod dogs repeats mushing history. A similar transformation occurred in Nome after the Gold Rush, whenmushers first began to race their freight teams.

The original Native dogs -- stocky Eskimo ''malamutes'' of the coast, rangy Indian ''huskies'' of the Interior -- had been joined by blue-eyed Siberiandogs brought by 19th century Russian traders. Then the Gold Rush lured just about any dog large enough to pull a sled, resulting in an explosionof cross-breeding and experimentation.

Gold-rush era missionary Hudson Stuck wrote in his 1914 book, ''Ten Thousand Miles on a Dog Sled,'' that the original Native sled dogs alreadyhad been extensively mated with setters, pointers, hounds, mastiffs, Saint Bernards and Newfoundlands, creating ''a general admixture of breeds,so that the work dogs of Alaska are an heterogeneous lot . . .''

The very best, according to the conventional wisdom of the day, were big, beefy, furry and tough.

As if to prove the point, a team of big malamutes won Alaska's first major sled dog race, the 1908 All Alaska Sweepstakes, a 408-mile dash fromNome to Candle and back. The massive haulers won the second race, too, but a team of smaller, more compact Siberian huskies took the third,overturning the idea that mushing required large dogs.

Teams of Siberian huskies quickly dominated the new sport and its premier race. A team of Siberians driven by John ''Iron Man'' Johnson dashedmore than 100 miles a day to set the course record of 74 hours, 14 minutes and 22 seconds -- a record never bettered. Leonhard Seppala'sSiberians won the Sweepstakes three years in a row. Siberians dominated the teams that carried serum across Alaska in 1925 to end the diphtheriaepidemic in Nome. And Seppala's famous leader, Togo, was a Siberian.

UPI / Corbis-Bettman Leonhard Seppala shows off his dogs in Lake Placid, N.Y., during a 1935 demonstration race. Seppala's Siberian huskies won three consecutive All-Alaska Sweepstakes, a 408-mile race from Nome to Candle and back that began in 1908. Siberians, including Seppala's famous lead dog Togo, played a big role in the 1925 serum run.

Largely because of the serum run, the distinctive blue-eyed animals became the popular image of the archetypal sled dogs. Martin Buser, who ranSiberian huskies in his first two Iditarod races, likens them to the ''Model T'' of dog mushing, but with a difference. While people moved on tonewer car designs, the image of the perfect sled dog remained fixed on Siberians for half a century. But in rural Alaska, village breeders didn't care what their huskies looked like. Year after year, fast dogs with tough feet were bred to fast dogs withtough feet. By midcentury, their descendents had begun to surpass Siberian huskies, whose offspring were selected to preserve their appearance,not to enhance performance. Just as Siberians had once overturned malamutes as the dog of choice, by the early 1960s the village husky had snuck past the Siberians. ''Many of the local mushers ran registered Siberian huskies, and most of us had bigger dogs,'' wrote Anchorage musher and long-time sprint racemarshal Dick Tozier in 1976. ''Then some of the Native teams started coming in from the villages and cleaning house. . . . As you might guess, wedrew the logical conclusion and turned to breeding smaller dogs.''

The notion that the world's fastest sled dogs came from Yukon-area villages became an axiom of the sport, a rule reinforced scores of times over theyears.

Famous examples include Native musher Johnny Allen, who dominated races around Fairbanks in the 1930s, as well as a whole series of racersfrom around Huslia. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Gareth Wright, a Nenana-born Athabaskan, began breeding Yukon-Tanana river dogs(many from Allen's stock) with a mixture of Irish setters, Siberian huskies, Targhee hounds and other dogs. The result was the ''Aurora husky,'' ared-coated, floppy-eared, blue-eyed animal that looked a bit goofy, although there was nothing goofy about their performance.

''They have a phenomenal desire to work,'' Wright wrote in the 1970s. ''Because of their gaits, running 20 mph is nearly effortless for Aurorahuskies.''

Over a 40-year period, Wright or his daughter, Roxy Wright Champaine, raced the ''Aurora huskies'' or their descendents to victory in every majorsprint race in Alaska.

But Wright's dogs were only the most recognizable strain of husky. Using dogs from his village of Huslia, George Attla won his first Anchorageworld championship in 1958. He went on to win the Fur Rondy an unprecedented 10 times, and the Fairbanks North American race eight times.East Coast veterinarian Roland Lombard, who won nearly as many championships as Attla, was known for traveling to villages to buy breedingstock.

As the 1960s slipped into the 1970s, mushers continued to experiment. Sprint musher and later Iditarod champ Dick Mackey said he bred blackLabrador-Siberian crosses into his dogs. Others tried out everything from German shepherds to Samoyeds to springer spaniels. Many peopleattempted wolf, largely without success. Iditarod founder Joe Redington experimented, too, trying out setters and Labradors. But most of the time, mushers bred husky to husky -- selecting traits already present in the dogs, according to several Iditarod mushers. ''Don't go mixing other stuff in and jumping around,'' Wright advised novice mushers. ''Once I got my principal strain going, I didn't cross anyother breed into it for over 20 years.'' By the advent of the Iditarod in 1973, the racing husky varied widely in color and appearance -- the ears might be floppy or erect, the eyes mightbe blue or brown, the fur could be any shade of any color. But all racing huskies had the essentials -- a hound-like leanness, the double coat, anaverage weight of about 50 pounds, and an insatiable desire to run in a team.

UPI / Corbis-Bettman Leonhard Seppala and dog team in New York.

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