Sakhalin Husky

The Sakhalin Husky has been the helper of the Nivkh people for many centuries.

Legends say that the Nivkh will be taken to paradise by a Sakhalin Husky, a dog born to run, pull and carry his beloved owner on a sled.

Sadly, the ancient practices of the Nivkh people in Sakhalin have declined, and with it the Sakhalin Husky, because of this the breed is now near extinction.

The history of the Sakhalin Husky is deeply rooted within the history of the Nivkh people, when the native people and whale hunting flourished. The Nivkh people used a dog sled as their only form of transport, the Sakhalin Husky was the only thing that could easily travel through the harsh landscape of Sakhalin, they would help the Nivkh people transport fish, and would receive some of the catch in return.

The Sakhalin Husky is a natural breed, formed by the nature of Sakhalin, because of this they are the ideal sled dog for harsh terrains.

As well as transporting fish, sled dog teams would also act as a postal service in Sakhalin. Only the Husky could reach camps and expeditions in Winter, they were also used by the Red Army to quickly, transport military cargo to the desired location. Sakhalin Huskies are considered by many Mushers to be one of the best sled dogs. With the dogs, mail was sent from Nikolaevsk to Sakhalin and back twice a month. The mushers didn't only carry mail and passengers, but also some goods from the island, like, ice cream. Fish was transported from Nikolaevsk to the Aleksandrovsky post. Along the winter road there was a chain of cordons: Pogibi, Vangi, Lah, Viakhtu, Trambaus, Khoe, Tangi, Mgachi, Arkovo, etc.[3]

Since the beginning of development in Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and other frosty regions of the Far East, dogs were indispensable helpers for the locals, pulling sledges in winter, and ships in summer.

In 1808 and 1809 Mamiya Rinzō (1780-1845), an explorer of Sakhalin and the Amur region, wrote in his report to the Edo shogunate: “Inhabitants [of the northern regions of Sakhalin] often use dogs. Every family, rich and poor, has dogs. They are played with and well taken care of. Often one person keeps 3-5 dogs, and even a whole family has quite a large number of them.” Rinzō also presented drawings showing people resembling modern Nivkhs traversing the snowy plains in dog sleds.[14]

With the further development of Sakhalin and advent of snowmobiles, the use for the Sakhalin Husky disappeared and the breed quickly declined.

As of 2020 only two Sakhalin Husky breeders remain in Sakhalin, and only more than 20 dogs exist. The breed is recovering, as there were only 7 dogs in 2014, but there isn't enough interest in the breed to bring it back to it's former glory.[15]

Sergei Lyubykh was the 'last Sakhalin musher', he passed away on the 31st October 2014 after dedicating his life to the Sakhalin Husky. [3][9][14]

Sergei Lyubykh was born in the village of Rybnovsk, Sakhalin, located on the coast of the Tatar Strait. His parents were Russian, they worked at the village fish factory, they lived their whole lives in Rybnovsk. Sergei had always loved dogs and when he was 10 years old he got 3 puppies, from then he learned the skills of the musher from local men and Nivkhs who arrived to Rybnovsk on sleds.[14]

Back then, sled dogs were an integral part of Sakhalin life, they connected villages together when strong ice covered the Tatar Strait between Sakhalin and the mainland in winter, the distance between Rybnovsk and the mainland was around 50km. From the age of 16, Sergei owned 11 dogs and had travelled with them from Rybnovsk to the Mainland more than once.[14]

After moving to Nekrasovka, Sergei would catch Saffron Cod in the frozen sea and lakes in winter and transport the fish with the dogs. For him, the dogs were not pets, they were an itegral part of his life.

Sergei crafted the majority of his gear by hand. He made sledges himself from fir and birch, using a technique he learned from the Nivkhs, in the summer, he cut and prepared the birch, bent it on fire, then left it to dry for two months. He also crafted the chains and harnesses for his dogs by hand. As well as crafting the gear himself, he also castrated the male dogs himself using a knife.

All of his dogs had different names, Chernysh, and Buklai were two of his dogs, they are Nivkh names. He also commanded the sled dog team in the Nivkh language. He was referred to as "a Russian who became a Nivkh" by local Nivkh people.

With the spread of snowmobiles across Sakhalin came a decline in strong sled dogs. However, Sergei said that strong dogs still remained in remote villages, and would walk through many villages in search of these individuals.

When a litter of puppies was born, Sergei would bury all the puppies in a snow pit, he would only keep the first 5-6 that escaped. The remaining puppies drowned. He culled the dogs that couldn't run, and skinned them to make clothes. According to Sergei: "tinkering with weak or old dogs is not a manifestation of love for dogs."[14]

"To die, so together with the dogs" "—— I don't want to, say, fly into space. On my dogs across the snowy plain and the frozen sea, I can go anywhere. In this silence, I feel boundless freedom. When dogs carry me, I rest my soul. When it's my time to die, I want my dogs to be there," - says Sergei.

Once, during a severe snow storm, Sergei was stranded for 3 days in the Tatar Strait. As a result, he decided to rely on the instincts of the leader of his sled dog team, who headed for the nearest village. Then he completely trusted the dog, "dogs don't break like snowmobiles", Sergei always loved and trusted his dogs.

"Dogs have always helped people" he said.

Now the number of Sakhalin Huskies is declining, and their disappearance from the Far East seems to be only a matter of time. The Sakhalin government talks of supporting the cultures of indigenous people in the north, but this support does not reach Sergei.

Sergei's dream was to create a village that was completely self-sufficient in food, the surrounding rivers and sea are rich in chum salmon and pink salmon, and the fields and mountains are rich in nuts and wild berries so food wasn't hard to come by. He also never gave up on trying to raise an heir for his kennel.[14]

Several young Nivkhs tried to learn the skills of the musher from Sergei, but they did not survive the tough training. At a festival of indigenous people held in the regional center of Nogliki in northern Sakhalin, an organizer told Sergei that he would send several young Nivkhs to him and asked him to quickly teach them to ride a dog sled, he also asked to borrow a sleigh. Sergei refused, it is not simple and quick to learn to be a musher.

The Laika fed mainly on the meat and fat of seals, as well as dried chum salmon and pink salmon. Sergei also gave them big loaves of bread twice a day. Sergei caught navaga and traded it for seals. However, his health had begun to decline, and he could no longer walk without pain. He worried that if he had to stay in the hospital he could not catch navaga to exchange for seals. Therefore, Sergei thought about reducing his pack from 12 to 7 dogs in the summer. He offered to transfer his dogs to the local Nivkhs, but there were no volunteers. But he could not release the dogs into the wild, they would run wild and start attacking livestock. Of course, Sergei did not want to shoot them either.

After an article was posted about Sergei in the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper in 1995, Abe Isamu, a musher from Wakkanai became interested in him and the two began contacting eachother.

In February 1999, Sergei and his wife Lydia were invited to Wakkanai. At first, when he told his fellow villagers about this, no one believed him, everyone just laughed, they said "your Japanese friend has deceived you!" Nevertheless, tickets and invitations did indeed arrive to Sergei from Japan, and his dream came true - he went to Wakkanai.

Overjoyed, Sergei took part in the Wakkanai dog sled competition, where he demonstrated his skills as a musher, that he learned from the Nivkhs. A warm welcome in Wakkanai and large-scale competitions stuck in his soul for a long time.

After Abe Isamu visited Sergei's homeland, where, together with Sergei, with the dogs, he crossed the Tatar Strait. They did not understand each other's words, but the general mood united them, there were no problems with communication.

Sergei wanted to transfer at least a few dogs to Hokkaido. Along with the dogs, he wanted to teach the traditions of raising the dogs, making sleds, etc. When Sergei first came to Wakkanai in the fall of 1999, he brought five of his puppies with him, unfortunately those dogs passed away without starting a breeding program.[14]

This breed's claim to fame came from the ill-fated 1958 Japanese research expedition to Antarctica. An emergency evacuation resulted in the abandonment of 15 sled dogs. The researchers believed that a relief team would arrive within a few days and left the dogs chained up outside with a small supply of food. However, poor weather conditions prevented the relief team from reaching the outpost.

Incredibly, nearly one year later, a new expedition arrived and discovered that two of the dogs, Taro and Jiro, had survived and they became instant heroes.[16] Taro returned to Sapporo, Japan and lived at Hokkaido University until his death in 1970, after which he was stuffed and put on display at the university's museum.[17] Jiro died in Antarctica in 1960 of natural causes and his remains are located at the National Science Museum of Japan in Ueno Park.

The breed spiked in popularity upon the release of a 1983 film about Taro and Jiro, Nankyoku Monogatari. A second film from 2006, Eight Below, provided a fictional version of the occurrence but did not reference the breed.[18] Instead, the film featured only eight dogs: two Alaskan Malamutes named Buck and Shadow and six Siberian Huskies named Max, Old Jack, Maya, Dewey, Truman, and Shorty. In 2011, TBS presented the much-awaited drama, Nankyoku Tairiku, featuring Kimura Takuya. It tells the story of the 1957 Antarctica Expedition led by Japan and their Sakhalin Huskies.

The breed and the expedition are memorialized by three monuments: near Wakkanai, Hokkaido;[19] under Tokyo Tower;[20] and near Nagoya Port.[21] Sculptor Takeshi Ando designed the Tokyo statues and was also the creator of the replacement of the famous Hachikō statue in front of JR Shibuya Station. The Tokyo statues were later removed, likely to be placed at Tokyo's National Institute of Polar Research.[22]