Close your eyes & imagine this: the year is 1917, tis a frigid January 17th in Wonalancet, a village located in Tamworth, NH. A Mastiff-mix "Kim" has been bred with a Greenland Dog (& direct descendant of one of Peary's sled dogs) "Polaris"... 3 puppies have been whelped, you've named them "Rikki", "Tikki" & "Tavi" respectively, ode to Kipling.

One pup really stands out.

"Rikki" was precocious & brilliant, enjoying all of the traits his breeder desired in a dog. He was thus re-named "Chinook" in honor of the breeder's favourite lead sled-dog from the Yukon. Glorious, masculine, funny, & a cream-puff with children. Chinook, in his yellow suit was a true mutant...a freak...not resembling either parent...yet stamping generation after generation with his look & character.

Intentionally bred by the dashing adventurer, Arthur Treadwell Walden. Chinook founded the breed we know & adore...The Chinook.

Born in 1871 in Indianapolis, Indiana, Arthur Treadwell Walden eschewed city life for that of the country & lived at his family's bucolic home in NH as soon as he was able to decide for himself ("live free or die", right?).

1896 found him heading to the Yukon with Klondike fever, wanting to cash in on the gold rush. Thus, Walden became an outfitter, serving the masses with supplies of every make & variety & it was here that he came to admire sled dogs, gaining great experience into their ways, characters, nature & uses...he became a Dog Puncher.

Returning to New England in the early 1900s, Walden married the wealthy Katherine Sleeper in NH, she had owned & operated Wonalancet Farm & Inn in Wonalancet, NH.  Together, she & the dashing, buckskin-adorned Arthur began breeding & training sled dogs at there with the Kennel name being Chinook Kennel. The ground-breaking  litter whelped on 1/17/1917  started it all.

Chinook lead the winning team at the 1st International Dog Derby OF 1922, in Berlin, NH...& then proceeded to set distance records, time records, weight-pulling records etc.. He was a phenom, even summiting Mt. Washington as lead dog in 1926. In fact, New England became a dog-sledding hub...& New Hampshire adopted the Chinook as it's state dog.

In 1927, Walden applied for & acquired placement for he & Chinook in the Byrd Expedition. Though he was 56 & Chinook was 10 & it was against policy, Walden was assigned as lead driver & trainer of the expedition's dogs. As such, the winter of 1927-28- involved prepping dogs, gear & men at the Wonalancet location. Of the 100 dogs trained for the expedition...half were sired by Chinook!

It was during the expedition & on his 12th birthday that Chinook disappeared. It was speculated that, nearing his end Chinook had simply wandered off to eternity in the endless polar vista .

Newspapers around the globe reported the passing of Chinook.

Upon Walden's return to NH, the townsfolk wanted to rename the roadway which connected Wonalancet to Tamworth in honor of Walden.

Walden requested that it instead be named for Chinook.
& it is.

The road known as "Chinook Trail" exists to this day.

1928 found Walden publishing his memoir, "A Dog puncher in the Yukon". & by 1930, he had sold Chinook Kennels to Milton (a chemist from Oregon State University!) & Eva Seeley who'd not only acquired one of Walden's Chinook pups, but had managed Chinook Kennels for Walden while he was on Admiral Byrd's first Antarctic Expedition.

The Seeleys immediately began a Husky & Malamute breeding operation...& their version of Chinook Kennels became the hub at which dogs were collected, bred & trained for Byrd's 2nd & 3rd polar expeditions. This also melded into governmental military contracts with Chinook Kennels supplying dogs for Army & Navy use during WW2. 

Eva Seeley was a woman of some controversy. Considered a bully at best, there are lengthy articles written about the nature of her  control, manipulation & need to act as THE conduit of Malamute & Husky breeds. Indeed, she created a massive division in the breeds themselves It is quite clear that Chinook Kennels was a commercial dog production & while we can discuss what a puppy mill is or is not, there were a lot of dogs being bred & channeled through Chinook Kennels, with profound affect on the format of the dog breeds themselves.

All told, Chinook Kennels, under the tutelage of the Seeley's, provided dogs for 6 expeditions! (Byrd's 2nd expedition; 2 US Army explorations; a US Air Force weather mission; & the US Army's North European campaign of WW2).

In 1955, President Eisenhower assigned Eva (Arthur had passed in 1945) with assembling & training sleddogs for Operation Deepfreeze-a Byrd-led 60-day international geophysical expedition...Eva stated: "Each trip needed about 200 dogs, this place was a regular village, we had tents up & down the hillside & makeshift housing for the trainers & the men who had to get used to feeding & caring for the dogs before they left on the expeditions"....

Admiral Byrd presented the Seeleys with a plaque at the Wonalancet site in 1939 commemorating the "noble dogs whose lives were lost in the pursuit of science.

To peruse an article revealing these snarky politics...scroll down below my cool Chinooky slideshow...

​Back to the Chinook breed, the following breed clubs offer loads of intel...(including breeders!):
​
chinook.org/breeders/

http://www.chinookclubofamerica.org/breeders--available-studs.html

When one commences to envision  the canine companion accompanying Admiral Byrd on his polar adventures (if one envisions at all...), one conjures a sled dog...right? At least, I do...in my Robert Service, Conradian mind-play. Byrd & an enormous Malamute trek side-by-side atop violent slabs of jutting ice floes. Assuredly, Byrd enjoyed the crowds of such dogs: Malamutes, Huskies, Chinooks & such (see my entry on Chinooks  tomorrow)...but, his true sidekick was a JRT-type of beastie. This makes sense, as he was an earth-man...& a determined earth dog would be the only dog likely successful in entering the inner sanctum of Byrd's id. Hence came "Igloo".

A stray on the frigid streets of Washington, DC, the darling terrier was discovered in 1926 by Maris Boggs, a woman of some note as co-founder of a nonprofit (Bureau of Commercial Economics) which created & distributed industrial films at a time when the United States was burgeoning with opportunity. Having attended both Bryn Mawr & Wharton, she certainly was apt to note a good dawg when she encountered one...so, she scooped him up.

Boggs could not keep him & seeing a newspaper article announcing Byrd's forthcoming trek to the North Pole, she thought : "Aha". Somehow, Maris convinced Byrd to take the terrier... & the yet-to-be-named JRT won a place in Byrd's heart, despite Byrd stating that he had no room for a terrier...(well.. duh...)......

Named "Igloo" by the ship's crew...the lucky dawg had his own custom attire to ward off the stunning sub-zero temps while he ventured to the Arctic, Antarctic & as Byrd's companion for meeting presidents, celebrities & common-folk alike...he thus became a much-loved dog celebrity. Tragically, in April of 1931, while Byrd was on a speaking engagement in IL without his sidekick. Igloo, back home in Boston, ingested what was thought to be rat poison. Byrd was rushing back to MA from IL but it was too late...Igloo passed.
​

I LOVE these antlers! 42.50 for the size shown here. Ideal for Anatolians...Mountain Dog Chews also offer moose (highest collagen out there) antlers...offering antlers does countless grand things: 1) develops and maintains great mandibular musculature...and hence...dentition...2) cleans the teeth.....3) keeps the masticational enzymes flowing like a nice, syrupy river....(which is phase one of good dogestion...digestion....ha! That's a typo I shall leave)...
Importantly, these are indeed huge...they don't have an odour/smell/scent/stench...& they last forever...so...plan on one per dog per year...

Cynics often speak of the disillusioning effects of experience, but I for one have found that nearly all things not evil are better in experience than in theory. Take, for example, the innovation which I have of late introduced into my domestic life; he is a four-legged innovation in the shape of an Aberdeen terrier. I have always imagined myself to be a lover of all animals, because I have never met any animal that I definitely disliked. Most people draw the line somewhere. Lord Roberts disliked cats; the best woman I know objects to spiders; a Theosophist I know protects, but detests, mice; and many leading humanitarians have an objection to human beings.

If the dog is loved he is loved as a dog; not as a fellow-citizen, or an idol, or a pet, or a product of evolution. The moment you are responsible for one respectable animal, that moment an abyss opens as wide as the world between cruelty and the necessary coercion of animals. There are some people who talk of what they call "Corporal Punishment", and class under that head the hideous torture inflicted on unfortunate citizens in our prisons and workhouses, and also the smack one gives to a silly boy or the whipping of an intolerable terrier. You might as well invent a phrase called "Reciprocal Concussion" and leave it to be understood that you included under this head kissing, kicking, the collision of boats at sea, the embracing of young Germans, and the meeting of comets in mid-air.

That is the second moral value of the thing; the moment you have an animal in your charge you soon discover what is really cruelty to animals, and what is only kindness to them. For instance, some people have called it inconsistent in me to be an anti-vivisectionist and yet to be in favour of ordinary sports. I can only say that I can quite imagine myself shooting my dog, but cannot imagine myself vivisecting him.

But there is something deeper in the matter than all that, only the hour is late, and both the dog and I are too drowsy to interpret it. He lies in front of me curled up before the fire, as so many dogs must have lain before so many fires. I sit on one side of that hearth, as so many men must have sat by so many hearths. Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him.
Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were. You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection. But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul.

It may be written in a book that my dog is canine; and from this it may be deduced that he must hunt with a pack, since all canines hunt with a pack. Hence it may be argued (in the book) that if I have one Aberdeen terrier I ought to have twenty-five Aberdeen terriers. But my dog knows that I do not ask him to hunt with a pack; he knows that I do not care a curse whether he is canine or not so long as he is my dog.

That is the real secret of the matter which the superficial evolutionists cannot be got to see. If traceable history be the test, civilization is much older than the savagery of evolution.

​ The civilized dog is older than the wild dog of science. The civilized man is older than the primitive man of science. We feel it in our bones that we are the antiquities, and that the visions of biology are the fancies and the fads. The books do not matter; the night is closing in, and it is too dark to read books. Faintly against the fading firelight can be traced the prehistoric outlines of the man and the dog.

Organised, clear & concise...this article is pretty stupendous...

I procure mine from Lambert...as "Aqua Zole" 500 mg. capsules...no prescription required...I'm not suggesting that YOU follow this protocol...I'm just telling you how it rolls for me...

Gee, I adore gorgeous food...this stuff, called "Farmina N&D" can be procured from Chewy...

You can still sing the song without the diarrheaic reality...Diagel for large dogs ROCKS IT!!! Available without a prescription from Revival, Lambert &/or Amazon...

What an incredible woman...ingenue, morphine addict, couturier, nazi agent. Lets agree that she freed us from our enslavement to the corset...& gave us the freedom & kinetic sensuality of jersey. We can argue about the rest of her legacy until the great Danes come home...

"If every human face bears a resemblance to some animal, then Mademoiselle Chanel is a small black bull. That tuft of curly black hair, the attribute of bull-calves, falls over her brow all the way to the eyelids and dances with every maneuver of her head"-Colette

“Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo… Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship. Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?” … A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.”

— Ursula Le Guin, in The Wave in the Mind (via fortooate)”

Autumn reading...

    Thimerosol-free & in a 0.5 ml dose! Yayyyy! I've shown the lepto-free option of this vaccine...as I have seen far too many problems (including death) with lepto vaccines. Certainly, small dogs are never necessarily good candidates for lepto vaccine...nor are sensitive breeds & those with MDR1...& then there are the thousands of mixed-breed dogs who may have MDR1...which is why buying a DNA kit from Embark makes such prudent sense.

    Incidentally, there is a HUGE difference between vaccination & immunization. Immunization is the act of possessing immunity. Vaccination is the act of receiving treatment with a product designed to achieve immunity to one or more diseases. We definitely hope that immunity results from vaccination...however, the only way to know for certain is to titer test. Titer testing is A MUST.  I do not recommend  vaccine boosters for any dog who has received their puppy vaccinations without first having a titer test. Dogs are not meant to receive annual vaccines repeated over and over and over and over and over and over an over and over and over....(this might appear dramatic...but...I have just given you 9 "overs")...thats 9 years of vaccines...the vaccination usually being a 5-way...more often a 7-way...so...I'm no math whiz...but, here goes: 9x5=45 vaccination products. 9x7=63 vaccination products....that is gross malpractice. 

Nobivac can be acquired without a prescription from Revival & countless other veterinary supplies.

Miss Davis is paws-down, my favourite actress.
​& a dog-lover...