Meant to be - Kaya's story

Kaya's story begins shortly after we lost our beautiful Jake. (click his name to read his story too)
I was thinking of him and Googling images of his breed. Jake was a Utonagan, a relatively new breed of dog, bred to look like the Canadian Timber wolf. We had got him from a rescue centre as a companion for our Border Collie, Moss. 

Our beautiful Jake

Sadly we lost Jake at only 8 years old. (Read his story HERE)

This time we were positive! We were NOT getting another dog! Losing one is heart-breaking, the thought that one day we were going to go through all that again with our lovely Border Collie Ollie reduced me to tears as it was. I certainly didn’t want another dog to put us through all that heartache again.

Read - Ollie's story

Whilst Googling and reading up about Jake’s breed, reminiscing and remembering how wonderful he was, I saw a photograph of a beautiful Northern Inuit dog. (After reading up on Jake’s breed history I had learned that Northern Inuits and Utonagans were in fact the same breed of dog….Lots of controversy surrounding the breed(s) which I have covered in another article.) The dog in the image was absolutely beautiful, she stood out amongst all the other images. She looked very much like Jake, but instead of being brown and black like he was, this dog was white and grey, almost like a negative image of Jake. I clicked on her picture to read up more about this stunning dog. I was taken straight to an animal rescue website. This dog was up for re-homing in my area! I got so excited when I read up on her history, she was perfect! It was like she was meant to be ours! Like I was meant to see her picture! But then I remembered the conversation my husband Paul and I had the night before about NEVER getting another dog! I decided to email Paul all her details and her picture anyway.

When Paul returned home from work I told him I had emailed him some details about a dog that was up for re-homing, he said “No! Julia! We are NOT getting another dog” 
I just said “Paul, open the email! It’s meant to be!”
Reluctantly, he viewed the email....His immediate reaction was…”Phone them first thing in the morning! She is beautiful!”
Needless to say the first thing I did in the morning was phone the animal rescue centre, sending them my email address and other contact details, saying I was very interested in homing this dog. I waited eagerly for a reply. 
Two very long hours past and then I got an email saying that the dog in question had already been reserved, all that was left was the home check, subject to that she would be re-homed the following week. I was gutted, but thought, “Ah well, it clearly wasn’t meant to be after all” 

But I didn’t give up at that, I emailed the rescue centre the following week and asked how the home check had gone. I was told everything had gone great. They had found the perfect home for her and she was going to be picked up the following day.
Well that was it. Paul and I talked about looking online for other suitable rescue dogs, but decided against it, believing that we just weren’t meant to have another dog and would go back to our original plan of sticking to having just one dog.

The following day I got a phone call…The guy that was supposed to be taking Kaya home that day had changed his mind an hour before he was due to pick her up….She was once again up for re-homing!! This WAS meant to be!!
We were told several people had been to see her in the hope of re-homing her, but had been turned away because they just weren’t suitable. As this guy already had a Northern Inuit and clearly knew the breed they had decided to let him adopt the her. Why he changed his mind at the last minute was a mystery.

We went to see her the following day taking Ollie with us, obviously us re-homing her was all subject to her and Ollie getting along. (Read Ollie's story HERE) 

The rescue centre was at the top of a very long winding country road. We parked our car at the bottom of the hill and started to walk up. At the top of the road we saw four or five people, all with dogs. We spotted Kaya straight away, sitting down next to the lady that was holding her lead. What happened next is an image I will never forget…As Kaya spotted us in the distance she stood up, wagging her tail excitedly. She was almost pulling the poor lady that was holding her lead over in order to get to us! The other dogs remained uninterested in us, but the closer we got to Kaya the more excited she got! As we got close to her she greeted us wagging her tail with so much force that she almost fell over!! It was as though she had been waiting for us, as though she recognised us instantly as her new family. She and Ollie took to each other instantly, it was as though they had known each other all their life! They bounced around playing happily together.

Ollie and Kaya's first meeting together

All the staff at the rescue centre couldn’t believe her reaction to us. They said she hadn’t reacted like this to anyone else, she had been friendly towards them, but calm, even the guy that was due to pick her up the previous day hadn’t had this reaction from her. She jumped around excitedly and followed us around happily, licking us and giving us her paw.
The staff at the home repeated what I had been saying since the very first time I saw her picture…”This was meant to be”

The next step was a home-check. The lady that had been taking care of Kaya said that because of the amazing reaction that Kaya had towards us she would do the home check the following Monday. Unfortunately because of where the home was situated and because of my husband’s work commitments it meant that we wouldn’t be able to pick her up for another week after the home check was completed. However, another member of staff said that because of how this was clearly “meant to be” He would actually deliver Kaya to us straight after the home-check!! They seemed confident that we would pass it, but had to follow procedure…..And so it was, we had the home-check 2 days later and an hour later this lovely man dropped her off at our house. This was the first time they had ever delivered a dog for anyone, but they said they had never seen a dog react in such a positive way towards strangers that Kaya had with us and they felt that she clearly needed to be with us as soon as possible…..
”It WAS meant to be”

For the first 2 months with us Kaya was a very quiet dog, in fact she didn’t even bark. She was very stubborn and suffered from selective deafness. Her recall was practically zero! Whilst she has always been an incredibly friendly and confident dog who fears nothing! There were certain things that she wouldn’t tolerate. She hated being towel dried, in particular around her legs and belly area, and would curl her lip up if we touched her in a way that she wasn’t happy with. We realise now, these issues were all part of her settling in process. She had come from a happy home and had been taken to the RSPCA because her previous owner was terminally ill. She had been in the same loving home since being a small puppy and suddenly at 5 years old, she ended up in a shelter. It must have seemed like her whole world had been turned upside down. Looking back I now realise that it took her quite a while to fully settle in and feel secure and confident that she wasn’t about to be moved on and placed in another home.

A couple of weeks after Kaya joined us I shared a picture of her on my Facebook profile. A friend of mine shared her picture and a friend of hers recognised her as the dog that her mum had sent to the RSPCA for re-homing. This lady was good enough to send me all Kaya’s paperwork, including her family tree, from which I have managed to trace a couple of her relatives, including a beautiful dog called Layka, who turns out to be Kaya’s Aunty. I also learned that she is in fact a Utonagan, not A Northern Unuit.

LAYKA - Kaya's Aunty

And this is Connor, who I also learned, with the help of  Facebook and the paperwork supplied by the daughter of her previous owner, is Kaya's first cousin. (They share the same Grandparents)

She is now very vocal! She doesn’t just bark now at strangers passing the house or knocking on our door, but she also ‘talks’ to us in a very comical way that is difficult to describe really….Like a series of different whining, barking and howling noises! Which she does when she wants to get our attention, either to tell us it’s time for a walk, that she’s hungry and also to wake me up every morning after my husband has left for work!

She is very food orientated….Greedy in other words! So treat training has worked wonders with her…She will do virtually anything for food! But will also steal it given the opportunity! We can’t put a sandwich down, turn our back and expect it to still be there seconds later.

Her re-call now is about 80%. Which has made a huge difference and it obviously means that she gets a lot more exercise because we feel more confident letting her run freely. Every now and again though, that selective deafness sneaks back…She is a very inquisitive dog and is easily distracted. If she sees something of interest in the distance she is heads off in that direction like a rocket!! It can sometimes take us calling her 3 or 4 times before she takes any notice, but at least she does come back…eventually! (Adding the words "Do you want a biscuit?" to her name helps significantly! lol) 

She now allows us to dry her with a towel and loves to be groomed daily. 

We get lots of attention wherever we go with her. She is a very friendly girl and loves meeting people. People often come over to stroke her. Occasionally people will cross the road to avoid her, because they think she is a big bad wolf!

She is a very happy girl and she has made our life complete again. She loves Ollie to bits, but doesn’t seem to be able to read him very well! Sometimes when he has had enough playing he will growl at her to warn her to leave him alone….Her reaction is to whine and ‘talk’ to him, poking his head with her paw, until he eventually gives in and plays with her again.

It was never our intention to replace Jake with Kaya, that would be impossible!! But she did help to fill that hole in our hearts that Jake left. She gave us something to focus on.
Her personality is probably the complete opposite to his anyway.....But she does share with him a lot of the wonderful traits that Utonagans have.

READ ALL ABOUT THE BREED HISTORY BY CLICKING HERE

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What does 'Utonagan' mean?

'Utonagan' - The name comes from an old Chinook Indian tale and means 'Spirit of the wolf'

~ Welcome to my Blog ~
I have been a Utonagan owner for several years.

I have gathered lots of information from other owners and members of the various Utonagan breed clubs which have been around over the years. 

This blog has been written using all the personal experience, information and knowledge that I have gathered along the way.

Although Northern Inuit, British Timber, Tamaskan and Utonagan dogs were originally from the same gene pool they are now considered separate breeds.

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