This week we had a number of Alaskan Huskies at the doggie daycare. They are fantastically vocal. There was an Alaskan Husky on the old TV show Due South (starring my one and only TV idol crush, Paul Gross. Seriously, if you haven't watched Slings and Arrows you missing out). Here’s what huskies look like:
I meant to delve into their spectacularly ancient origins this week. Scientists believe that the ancestors of Alaskan Huskies came across the Bering Straight along with their humans when the Bering Land Bridge was open both 35,000 and 20,000 years ago. Those dogs were already fully domesticated from central or east Asian wolves.
There were three important breeds of dogs descending from those migrations: the Innu Canoe Hunting dogs, the Tahltan Bear dogs, and the Salish Wool dogs. These are now extinct breeds, but the Salish Wool dogs were so intriguing I had to learn more.
The Salish women of Vancouver Island were the breeders of the Salish Wool dogs. They kept them on little islands off the coast where the dogs were safe from interbreeding with hunting dogs and sled dogs. The women paddled out to the islands every day, bringing stews made from salmon, herring, and anchovies. They sang to the dogs while they fed and groomed them.
The dogs were bred from Spitz type dogs, which are pointy eared dogs whose tails curl up over their rears. Samoyeds, Shiba Inus, and Pomeranians are all Spitz type dogs.
Here’s a photo of a Samoyed lounging with a Collie and a Great Dane:
The wool dogs of Puget Sound were numerous and for several thousand years fueled a very successful weaving industry. The women who were their keepers and breeders sheared them and spun their wool, combining it with goat wool. The goat wool provided the barbed fibers that kept the yarn together. The dog wool was white - easily dyed - and soft. The Salish Wool dogs were also companions to the spinners and weavers.
The blankets woven from the dog and goat wool had spiritual significance. Chief Janice George, writes, “You should think about blankets as merged objects,” (this is from the opening paragraph of Salish Blankets: Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth). “They are alive because they exist in the spirit world. They are the animal. They are part of the hunter; they are part of the weaver; they are part of the wearer.”
Captain George Vancouver (who was the first European to chart the Pacific Northwest - and obviously the namesake of Vancouver Island) wrote about the Salish Wool dogs in 1792. They were abundant then - and the dog wool blankets were unique in what he had seen of the world. (Most scientists believe that the Salish Wool dogs were the only dogs in human history bred for wool. In fact, until artifacts from the 1800s were recently analyzed - revealing dog DNA in the fibers - many scientists thought the dog wool blankets were mere legend). Vancouver said that the wool dogs resembled large white Pomeranians. That the dogs’ fleece held together just like a sheep fleece would, so dense was their fur. The Salish at that time generally wore woolen clothing, which he assumed was woven from the dogs. Here's a Pomeranian:
As abundant as the dogs were in the 1700s, they were nearly extinct by 1858. Hudson Bay Blankets were partly to blame. European incursion was certainly to blame. Finally, the women who tended and bred the dogs stopped isolating them, and they bred with other types of dogs until they simply vanished from the earth.
Of course, as I was mourning the demise of the Salish Wool dogs (wishing I could have a Salish Wool dog farm) I discovered the Alaskan Klee Kai dogs. These dogs were created in the 1970s, and are miniature huskies. There are only about 700 of them in the world - most of them live in Wasilla, Alaska. You may remember Wasilla as the home of Sarah Palin.
Klee Kai is Inuit dialect for “small dog”. They generally weigh between five and twenty pounds. Here’s a photo of one:
I thought, perhaps a Klee Kai might be the dog we’ll adopt this summer, but then I watched a YouTube of them vocalizing. I think maybe a different type of dog.
But speaking of adopting dogs, my cousin Jan - of the fabulous goat farm - has adopted a corgi! The corgi arrived Wednesday night from California, driven by a friend who was heading to North Carolina. Here’s a photo of Teddy:
I can hardly stand the cuteness!
Our soap business continues to forge ahead - mainly working through paperwork that transforms us from a New Mexico business to a Colorado business. If you’re feeling like you’d like to shift your energy and summon the spring, I suggest you go to our website and buy a bunch of manly bars:
These are scented with tobacco and bay leaf. Their scent drives me crazy. They remind me of my best high school boyfriends! Here's a link that will take you directly to those bars: https://www.serenasoaps.com/product-page/tobacco-bay-leaf-3-oz