A few weekends ago I drove over to Sacramento and picked up our new addition: Ike, a 9 month old West Siberian Laika. He’s a really nice dog, very friendly and outgoing. He’s got loads of drive too! And wow does he have some pipes! 
Ike was imported from Ukraine, from a breeder named Igor Kosovskiy who is well known for working his dogs on bear, boar, and small game. I originally wanted a young pup, but since I was looking for a dog with strong natural bear aggression, Igor felt Ike was the right choice for my needs. Ike should be a perfect addition to our bear shepherding program that I’m working on. I’m pretty excited about him!
I hope that Ike will be a great addition to the North American gene pool too, but we’ll have to see how he hunts first. To be continued…
Here are some pics of him…
Congratulations on the addition to the family. How far back does his pedigree goes to his aboriginal roots?
I am particularly interested in Laikas because the gene-pool is not entirely trapped within a closed registry with very few founders.
Thanks Dave! I have his pedigree, I’ll send it to you.
I am interested in the breed for their aboriginal roots too. I like the idea of owning a breed that is less refined, it helps give me perspective of what the NK breeds may have been like before NIPPO refined them the way they have.
I considered getting a Hokkaido Ken as they are bear aggressive too, but I preferred an aboriginal dog and that is why I went with the WSL.
For me, the importance is because there are too many breeds with too few extant ancestors. One can preach the breed has very diverse founders, but it does not means anything if the other founders of the past contribute almost nothing to the current dogs due to popular sires.
Like Swedish Vallhunds started with 5 sires, 10 bitches between 1940s and 1950s; however in 2010s, there are only two sire lines and one maternal line still intact. The second sire line is in danger of going extinct. So despite having 15 dogs at the foundation, the effective population size for the modern dog is only 3.
Now in conservation biology, there need to be at least 50 ancestors to be considered as critical; and 500 to be endangered. That is why says, even though the Yellowstone Grizzlies are numerous, they are considered as critical because there are only 20 unique genomes in the gene-pool of the entire population.
So, I am curious how diverse the Laikas are nowadays if someone was to sequence their genomes. Unfortunately with the Nihon-ken breeds, especially Hakkaido, they have way too few founders and probably fewer unique individual genomes decades after the creation of the breeds.
I can attest that Ike is a very sweet boy. Although my two (Shikoku & Akita) gave
him some worry, he adapted quite quickly and Brad got himself a beautiful boy.