Where it all began....BREED HISTORY

Today, due mainly to bad breeding practices, the Utonagan has been reduced to a small gene pool and remains extremely rare outside of its native Britain, with its numbers dwindling yearly.

It all started with a woman called Edwina Harrison. She had her own vision of a type of dog she wanted to create. She had no intention of creating a breed, just one woman trying to make a dog that fit HER idea of the perfect dog. She wanted the dog to look like a Canadian Timber wolf but be easy to train and to be great with families. She imported some husky/type dogs from the US and other parts of Europe to be bred with her already developing stock of Alaskan malamutes, German shepherds, and Husky mixes. The original lines are not known, and Eddie is no longer alive to be able to clarify just what happened in the beginning. It was suggested that she also imported a Wolf dog from Canada, but this has never been confirmed.

After she had already begun this process, she started to have help caring for her dogs, and of course, some puppy buyers. These other people saw how well this breed was taking off and set to it to actually make it a breed. At first they called them Wolf dogs,  and were advertised as 'Wolf hybrids' but later was renamed the Northern Inuit dog. It is still unknown about whether there is any wolf in them. Some say there was a high percentage of wolf, others say low, and others yet say that there is none at all. A few years into the creation of the new breed, some of the founding breeders started to have disagreements in how the breed was progressing. Some thought the look wasn't the way it should be, some disagreed with others breeding practices, and others thought that they needed to continue adding in new lines.

This is where it gets confusing....

So they had the first big split. Northern Inuit dogs, and a "new" breed called Utonagans (Which is American Indian for "Spirit of the wolf"). Utonagans began adding in more lines to the existing breed, while the Northern Inuit society continued to breed "pure" to "pure".

The newly formed 'Utonagan group' had its own bit of trouble with unethical breeders and the mixing in of bad lines and split once again into 2 groups, but still using dogs from the original line. Unfortunately, during all this confusion, some really bad health issues started to pop up, including epilepsy. The health issues are believed to have been a result of breeding closely related dogs.

In November 8th 2006 one of the prolific breeders of the Utonagan in the early days (who was a founder member of the Utonagan society, that got her membership revoked under the club rules) had over 50 Utonagans (Adults and puppies) removed by the RSPCA after they were found to be living in filthy conditions. A bitch was described as being ‘in a shocking condition and emaciated’ and couldn’t feed her pups because she had no milk.

Two of the puppies were in such a poor state that they were taken straight to the Vets, who were unable to save them and they sadly died.

Martin Prowel, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said the deaths of the dogs were significant due to the conditions they had been found in and the short amount of time between when they were removed and when they died.

She was banned from keeping dogs for 12 months. However, she had hidden 8 of her dogs with a friend before the RSPCA seized her dogs and after she was prosecuted and during her ban, she changed her name, moved to a different area and started breeding Utonagans again. Many of the dogs she bred from had Epilepsy and other bad health lines. Many of today's Utonagans are from this line (including my own dog Kaya)
Utonagan breeder appeals against ban - click to read

Nadia Carlisle with Kaya's Grandad, Twatha Iaxion

So going back to the split of Utonagans, one woman that split off took her Utonagans and moved away and started her own mix of breeds...these became the Tamaskans. Not much is really known about this. The breed never took off in the UK because of the health concerns. Some say that she was the one to introduce the epilepsy lines into Utonagans. I do not know for sure. Nor do I know if she used any of the Utonagan lines with epilepsy to begin the Tamaskan breed. However, I do know that Tamaskans in the states are doing really well.

Ok, back to the Northern Inuits. During the same time as all the Utonagan politics were happening, the ones that remained with 'Northern Inuits' began having their own issues. Mainly, they were fighting about whether to add in new lines and also some of the members just flat out were not getting along. So the Northern Inuit Society had yet another two splits over the years, one became The Inuit Dog Association, and the other was the British Inuit club

(you still with me?? lol)

The woman who founded The Inuit Dog Association ended up getting kicked out of the club due to some really bad practices.

Just to make things even more confusing....More recently the British Timber dog Society has been formed. 

From what I understand, the BTD is a cross between the Utonagan and Northern Inuit. A little Czech Wolf dog and a little Sarloos were used initially. The BTD claim to have used the best health and temperament checked lines to get where you find the breed today.

There is now also a group called the 'British Lupine dog Society' which was formerly known as the 'British Timber dog society'. You can visit their website HERE