Geographic catchment area for the founders of the breed

Abowe: The first picture is of the dog Houdin, who is behind many of today's Samoyeddogs, one of the founders of the breed of the so-called shorter-haired variant. He was considered to have a fantastic coat contributed to good coat quality in the breeding. This typ of dog is quite rare today due to the widespread fur and show breeding that occurred for a long time in many parts of the western world. The second picture is of a Samoyed Laika or Vogul Laika that was shown at an exhibition in Russia around the turn of the 19th-20th century, both names are used in different sources. Even that a typical individual who resembles Houdin.

Above: it is within this, black circle seen in two of the images, geographical area and perhaps even further that the founder dogs of the Western-bred Samoyed dog breed were taken from. Within this geographical area lived many different polar peoples, family groups, and they differed greatly in their different livelihoods and animal husbandry. Some were hunters and used hunting and sled dogs, while others had begun to develop reindeer husbandry and had gradually begun to use a smaller dog variant similar to the Swedish lapdog in the work with the reindeer.

The fact that the breed in the Western world came to be called the Samoyed dog shall not mislead us into thinking that it is exclusively the Nenets dogs that are behind the breed's development in the West.

When you have studied the history of the breed and mapped large parts of it, it becomes clear quite quickly that our breed does not come from a single small group of dogs from a single family group among the polar people. A geographical part is emerging that we can define. Within this geographical area lived several different tribes of polar peoples. 

• Different groups of Samoyed peoples (Nenetser, Enetser, Naganasaner, Sellkuper, Motor, with more), both those who kept herds of reindeers and the Samoyed groups who continued their life as hunters and used the dogs for hunting and pulling. 
• Khanter (in older litterature previously called ostjaker)
• Manser (in older litterature previously called Vogul)
• Chanter
• Evenker 

And others fit within the adoption area that our dogs founders was retrieved within. These last mention peoplegroups also kept white and multicolored dogs for work and survival.

So it is not, as some people often think, only the Nenets and their modern lifestyle and means of subsistence we should look at when we want to understand the origin of our breed. In the eastern direction, the catchment area for our founders also borders the Yakutian areas where more or less identical primitive dogs lived and worked as hunting and draft dogs.

The mapping of the catchment area grows as you look at where the polar explorers got their dogs for the expeditions and where geographically the dogs were taken from that were directly imported to dog owners in the Western world. In the various writings, various places in the eastern parts of West Siberia are mentioned as well as Novaja zembla, Ural and the dog Sabarka (KIlburns Scott's import) were brought further west than the expedition dogs. And so on. 

We know, among other things, that the polar explorers bought up dogs within a fairly wide area and that they were dogs that already in Siberia were used as draft dogs. The smaller reindeerherdingdogs that were found in the same geographical area were not considered as useful as draftdogs as they were smaller and bred for a different purpose. However, it seems that one or maybe a couple of the smaller reindeer herders (more like the Swedish lapphund) may have come to be mixed into the establishment of the breed in the western world. Then perhaps mainly Kilburn Scott's Sabarka who was chocolate brown and in the pictures that are available looks smaller and comes from an area further west than the majority of the founders of the breed.

We also know that the different people groups within this area had contact with each other and, among other things, met at different markets for trade and to pay yasak (Russian tax). This also leads us to assume that their dog populations also came into contact with each other and blood was shared between them. Perhaps it was thanks to this genetic flow between the families dog populations that the dog type survived genetically even in Siberia.

If today we want to bring home a new founder population, we will have to expand the geographical area considerably more, as these people and dogs have come to move a lot across Siberia. The Nenets laikas can be found, for example, all the way up in the eastern part of Siberia today. We simply have to look for the right type of dog and not stare blindly at a certain family group of the Samoyed peoples, for example the Nenets or lock ourselves too much around an all too narrow geographical area.

In Russia and Siberia today, much focus is placed on preserving the smaller variety of dog that has come to be important in reindeer husbandry. The larger variant that was kept for hunting and sledding purposes has recently fallen into the shade as they have largely been replaced by technology and motor-driven vehicles. But it is still possible to find specimens either of the larger hunting dog or a variant that is mixed between the larger and smaller dog. However, these dogs today often go by the name Nenet laika, Samoyed laika or similar. In Sibirine these dogs still appear in different colors just like our Samoyed dog did when it came from Siberia.

In the Yakutian parts of Siberia there are still a large number of dogs of the larger model still working as sled dogs and looking like the aboriginal Samoyed dog. These have been taken care of in Russia by establishing the Yakutian Laika breed in the kennelclub world. In modern DNA studies, it is seen that these two breeds in the Western world are up to 25% genetically similar.

On the Russian breed club's website for Yakutian laika, in an article you can read e.g. the following on the kinship between Samoyed and Yakutian Laika:

"...made a genetic test of Yakutian Laika which showed the mixture of Samoyed (25%) and unknown breeds (75%) in the dog's blood. So some owners came to the conclusion that Samoyeds were mixed in our breed. Answer: The following picture illustrates the origin of the breeds: This test absolutely does not mean cross-breeding. The fact that the analysis showed that your dog is 25% similar to the Samoyed means only one thing: Samoyed is the closest breed to yours and that you have a common ancestor. It's quite logical because all these dogs are northern, and most likely they have one common ancestor. ... it shows that your dog has just some kind of kinship with Samoyed. Such analysis can mislead ordinary people - it says nothing about how many breeds in your dog are mixed, it just shows how much your dog looks like the other one, no more!"

Source: https://yakutian-laika.com/en/a/137  

The question is, should the Western pedigreed Samoyeds and the Yakutian Laika open their stud books between themselves to create a healthy genetic flow that will make it easier for the breeds to survive into the future?