ON THE PRESERVATION OF A CULTURAL HERITAGE

This part is written in an attempt to analyse why and how the registered breeding of the Samoyed resulted in a breed known with this name, but which - in varying degrees of deviation – has now hardly more in common with the aboriginal Samoyed than the white colour of its coat. The first section, ‘Registered breeding,’ describes this development. The following section ‘Short History of the Dutch Breeding of Samoyeds’ sketches the only known exception to this worldwide trend. In Holland, a small group of breeders still tries to keep on breeding to the aboriginal type. The last section, ‘Cynology And The Preservation Of Cultural Heritage,’ discusses aspects of the environment in which registered breeding takes place and how it, nonetheless, offers a solution for preserving the breed for the future.

Ernest Kilburn Scott and his wife, Clara, were the first to begin the systematic and purposeful breeding of the Samoyed dog in the Western world. They worked on this project for many, many years to come. Growing up with these dogs, their daughters, Joyce and Ivy, became actively engaged in this project too. It all started with the business trip Ernest Kilburn Scott made to Archangelsk in 1893. Mr. Scott stayed there for a couple of months, and, as mentioned before, acquired the pup, Sabarka, from a Samoyed tribe living in a nearby town. He never traveled all the way into Siberia, but via the many contacts he maintained, he did manage to gather information on the dogs originating in those territories.

This resulted in the foundation of the famous and large-scale breeding kennels ‘of Farningham.’ Farningham was the name they took for their kennel after moving to Farningham, Kent, in 1922. Until that time no specific kennel name was used. Sabarka sired the very first litter bred of an imported bitch called Whitey Petchora. Sabarka is still found in the pedigree of Samoyeds today. Soon after, more dogs came into reach, like Musti. A litter was sired by Musti with Polar Light Of Farningham, Bred In England Around 1920, And An Ancestor Of Na-Njarka, Here In 2002 At The Age Of Five Years Whitey Petchora. Besides the directly imported dogs, the acquired ones that were among the few canine survivors of different Polar expeditions played the most significant role in their breeding program. It has been the great merit of the Kilburn Scott’s that when typical examples came within reach, they put a great effort in acquiring these dogs for their kennels. For example, Antarctic Buck, was an offspring of dogs taken by the Borghrevink expedition to Antarctica. On returning from the South he was left behind in Australia, and was put on display in the zoo in Sydney. He was seen by Mr. and Mrs. Kilburn Scott when visiting Australia in 1904. A year later they managed to obtain this dog and had him shipped to England. Unfortunately, not long after arrival, he died of distemper. But, before his death, he had sired at least two litters, securing his contribution to the breed.

That a Samoyed dog ever reached the South Pole is a tall story. Because of an outbreak of distemper in Greenland at the end of 19th century, Denmark forbid the export of dogs from its colony. After the turn of the century that situation had changed. When Amundsen started to prepare for the South Pole in 1910, he paid a visit to Copenhagen ordering 100 Greenland huskies, which he managed to secure through the Danish government. When the ‘Fram’ left Norway in 1911 sailing for the South, she had 97 dogs on board that were delivered from Greenland. Amundsen apparently did use Samoyed dogs for sledding though, but that was on his later expedition of 1917 to 1920 for the North East passage sailing along the coast of Siberia to the Bering Strait ending up in Nome, Alaska. Stops were made at Waigatz and Dickson Island where some dogs were taken on board. Further on the way his ship, ‘Maud,’ was brought up by ice and had to spend the winter beset on the Siberian coast at Cape Chelyuskin. Two pictures exist of the same situation and, taken from different angles, show a sledge with five dogs attached in front of Maud. These pictures were taken on the 20th October 1919 at Cape Chelyuskin, when Amundsen sent a party of three of his crewmembers with post to Nishny Kolymsk, a town 200 land miles inwards. The three dogs in the middle are unmistakably of Samoyed origin.

The one on the left with black plates on the head and short coat reminds me of the dog Luska (see: www.oldsams.info), owned by the Prince of Wales in the 1880s. The dog on the right is clearly a full size bigger than the others and his sturdy posture is more like that of a Greenland husky male.

In 1909, Ernest Kilburn Scott formed the Samoyede Club, the first of all special Samoyed breed clubs established in Great Britain as well as in the whole world. In May 1909, this club adopted the first breeding standard, drawn up by the Kilburn Scott’s (probably by Clara, who was the actual breeder of the family). The ‘Summary of Points’ opens with the paragraph: “Colour. Pure white; white, with slight lemon markings; brown and white; black and white. The pure white dogs came from the farthest north, and are most typical of the breed.”

The second sentence proves that they assumed that they were dealing with an existing, distinguishable white-coloured breed. It also reveals to us the apparent awareness that some of the dogs used for building up the breeding population, showed aberrations to the typical appearance of that breed indicating a certain degree of contamination with other breeds. Pictures Taken On 20thOctober 1919 At Cape Chelyuskin The Kilburn Scott’s must have themselves begotten an image of the looks of the purebred dog, which served as a guideline for where to aim for, and how to act, and how to proceed in the selection process. The first four paragraphs of a promotion leaflet of the Farningham kennels read as follows: “These kennels were the first to be established, and for over thirty years Mrs. Kilburn Scott has been most careful to breed and import only correct types of Samoyed dogs. They are the domesticated dogs of the Samoyed people and their natural habitat is the Tundra country which stretches form the White Sea in North Russia to the Yenesi River in West Siberia. USES. The Samoyed people use them principally for driving and rounding up reindeer, a task similar to that of droving sheep, and they have been so engaged from prehistoric times, also they are used for hunting.

They have hauled sledges on various Arctic and Antarctic expeditions and many of those at Farningham are directly descended from such dogs.” Due to the diversity in origin of the few - actually very limited number of - dogs available for the breeding purposes, it was possible for them to keep eight different bloodlines in their kennels at a certain stage. Among the dogs they had bred, they distinguished three different types of head, which they called: the bear type, the fox type and the wolf type. Title winners on shows in England in 1938: Spartan of the Arctic and Crystal of the Arctic By experimenting and consistent breeding they managed to create a viable and pure inheriting population of the type they wanted. It is, without question, the Kilburn Scott’s are accountable for establishing the Samoyed dog in the Western World as a recognised and registered breed. Instead of trying to create a new breed of their own which, in fact, would have been a much easier goal to accomplish, the goal they set themselves was to stick as close as possible to the aboriginal type.

Their eventual idea of breeding Samoyeds to provide Polar expeditions with dogs, turned out to be in vain. The sole purpose of breeding became the show ring for the Kilburn Scott’s too. But this did not change their judging of the breed, as they have always kept looking for an overall sound exterior. In the early days of Polar expeditions it was common to invite returned Polar travellers to lecture about their adventures for select audiences. But the race to reach both the North and the South Poles turned public interest in Polar expeditions into complete hype, reflected by articles published in newspapers. Everything connected to the expeditions became interesting for quite a while. Publications on the Arctic became so popular that several books were translated and published in foreign languages reaching an even broader audience. It also stimulated the wish to own a dog connected with these heroic adventures. Together, with the steadily growing attention for the breed, the number of people engaged in breeding augmented. In the first two decennia of the 20th century the Samoyed dog was nationally and internationally sought after and British kennels exported to countries all over the world. World War I implied an interlude to international cynologic live and in England it was even officially forbidden for a while to organise dog shows. After the end of World War I cynologic live revived and soon flourished more than ever. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution it became impossible to import dogs to Western Europe from regions under control of the new regime.

When the Bolsheviks took over a region, it was closed to outsiders. Trade routes between the West and Siberia had to close down. A route which had served as a gateway for obtaining typical specimens of the aboriginal type was gone. It England it was during the 1920s that the transformation process began, step-by-step changing the functional exterior of a working dog into that of a show dog with many dysfunctional characteristics. Until this period the breeding by the Kilburn Scott’s had been leading, but from then on other kennels started to dominate. One of the most well known kennels of the time was the ‘Arctic’ kennel of Miss M. Keyte-Perry, which succeeded over the years in gaining in the show ring an enormous collection of champion titles. Pictures from the 1930s of winning dogs in shows in England clearly show the trend towards big bone, impressiveness, and exuberant coat that had already started.

The following typical characteristics the tended to exaggerate further and further: the whole appearance of the dogs became increasingly plump and squat, low on legs, with steep hindquarters, small round feet, an overall coat profuse and long, the muzzle short and broad, and a set of teeth of underdeveloped size, small, flabby ears, and little mobile, a domed skull, pronounced stop, and big round eyes placed towards the front of the skull making the sight angle smaller, giving a narrowed sight field. Another peculiarity of the changed type is the rapid pace in which the development of the body reaches the state of fully blossoming adulthood.

 At the age of two, these dogs are at their peak, and then they start to look aged very quickly. By contrast, dogs of the Farningham type develop slowly. A bitch is not fully grown before she turns three years old and a male reaches its peak at the age of five. Both keep their vitality and beauty until a very old age. It is very well possible that crossbreeding has occurred with other breeds to achieve this transformation. It is a public secret that in England (in the 1950s?) at least once a Chow Chow has been used for inbreeding.

It is quite possible that the White Keeshond has been bred in as well. It is known that in the 1930s and 1940s it occurred in shows held in Holland and Switzerland that specimen of the White Keeshond were described as Samoyed and had to be removed from the ring at the start of judging. Also the silhouette of many today’s show Samoyeds fits the silhouette of the Keeshond.

Anyway, a lot of the above-mentioned characteristics are traits adherent to either of these two breeds and strange to a sound working dog. At the end of the 1950s, the pure Farningham type is no longer found in the prominent breeding kennels of England. Around that time, R-PADS member Mr. Clay met Mrs. D.L. Perry, owner of the Kobe kennels. They discussed the breeding in England and she admitted to him in private that a breeder who wanted to compete successfully in the show ring had been forced to follow this trend as with dogs of the Farningham type one did not stand a chance of winning anymore.

In less than a hundred years, step by step the Samoyed breed world wide has undergone a metamorphosis where the wolfishness, so typical for a Polar dog, has been bred out. The functional construction of the body that goes along with speed, stamina, and nimbleness, that are necessary to work under all conditions such as herding, hunting, and sledge dog have also disappeared.

However, apart from all the other changes in appearance it is the change in expression of the head, which is most striking. In the above mentioned leaflet of the Farningham kennels the following description of the head is given: “The ears are erect, slightly rounded at the tips and set well apart, giving a fine open forehead, which indicates the extremely intelligent expression of the breed.”

Exactly this facial expression has been swapped for the looks of a teddy bear, the domed forehead concealed by thick white hair like a knitted cap slid down to the eyebrows with on top two little triangles being the tiny ears popping up. On July 22, 1997 the FCI published the latest revision of the standard. In this version, a remarkable sentence is added to the paragraph ‘Behaviour and temperament’, stating:

“The hunting instinct is very slight.”

It shows that the transformation process continues, touching now other undesirable traits for passionately hunting behaviour is inconvenient when keeping a dog as family pet. But the past still lingers in the description of the general appearance, which opens with the words:

“Medium in size, elegant, a white Arctic Spitz.”