Prick-Eared

via chestofbooks.com [Image: W.E. Mason's Dogs of All Nations, 1915]

While Riley’s breeder and I were discussing about a possible addition to the family in about a year and a half, I expressed my sorrows for the void left behind of a primitive dog for a decade and a half. She offered to establish contact with a few breeders of the Nordic spitzes. However interestingly enough, during a correspondence about the laika landrace, she found a tadbit on Jämthund, or Swedish Elkhound, and how breeders were nervous to forefeit their strains to the hands of pet owners and show folks.

Confounded to why she found such a dog, I casually mentioned that the Jämthund was considered as part of the Norwegian Elkhound breed, before halfway through the last century, as illustrated in the old texts. Upon researching, I discovered a native of Jämtland dedicated his life toward preserving the Swedish Elkhound. Shockingly so, I found out that the man responsible for the restoration of the Swedish Vallhunds was also one of the people involved in the project of conserving the Jämthund. Yes, none other than Count Bjorn von Rosen himself.

It seems like the reason the Jämthund was split from the greater landrace and was made into its own breed is to preserve the local strain native to Jämtland as Elkhounds with actual pedigree history were more desired than the dogs without papers. In order to save the type, desired by the neighbouring hunters, from being eroded by the more popular Grey Norwegian Elkhound, one man sought to get these dogs registered within the Swedish Kennel Club.

This is what Aksel Lindström, the man who pushed for recognization of his dog as a separate breed in 1946, has to say about the Swedish Elkhound in 1952:

This is the story of the dog who disappeared.

Perhaps it is something of an exaggeration to say that still Jämthund completely obliterated, but enough, I dare say, that the race was virtually annihilated, when rescue work at the eleventh hour was started and the last fragments accumulated to form the basis for the strain of Jämthund we now possess.

Several researchers labeled this dog to be the most primitive Norse we have to remain intact. How so really relate escapes my judging, but that Jämthund existed in Jämtland and adjacent landscape since prehistoric times, all should be considered for certain. Against this background, it seems that was happening so much more remarkable. And still the dog in 1946 definitely was recognized as a race, had a battle that is certainly unprecedented in the Nordic kynologins (raslärans) history, finally brought to a happy ending.

How was it that this dog went out to meet their extermination center in the eyes of ambitious Swedish kennelman?

To provide a comprehensive answer to that question let themselves not be done, for in this sequence are many obscure points that are still unsettled, but to try to clarify some lingering misconceptions about the past, I here by a sketchy description to relate the essence.

Even during the 1910s, there were plenty of big adults Jämthund in the district I grew up, and that the djurbetagna boy you happened to be, it was obviously so, that these dogs for me came to embody the best and only true of the large family Canis (dog). Mao for me it would be a Jämthund; all other races seemed grotesque and unreal, no matter how fine pedigrees that could be produced. This unforgivable unilateral perception of the canine world, lay me long in the barrel when it came to getting the right contact and the valuation of other dogs, but it would be helpful to me in one important respect, further into the future.

The individual copies of the small Norwegian Elkhound, which during my adolescence began to be held here and there in the villages, I regarded with suspicion and contempt. Certainly not this was because I had no premonitions about the Norwegian Elkhound was to supplant Jämthund, rather it was the small Norwegian Elkhound frequent nervous yelp temperament and their grief and sooty face, which so brightly broke the major gårdvararnas bright faces and dignified disposition, which was at me react as I did in those days.

Since Swedish Spitz Dog Club took office in Östersund began to propaganda for the so-called purebred Norwegian Elkhound to provide increasingly clear traces. Folks respect for pedigrees step and desire to win the exhibition attracted prices. The new dog town became increasingly common even among the peasantry, and thus still had the dog walk towards the Holocaust had begun. But in the early years, this was a questionable and slowness course of events, and even in the early twenties, there were relatively large strains of Jämthund left.

But ten years later when I wanted to get me a dog of the old type, I found to my dismay that the dog was still almost completely disappeared. Only in the forest district’s hunters, who put more value on good hunting properties than pedigrees, I found a thing or two copies of the giant continues to dog, but most of them did produce an element of foreign blood. and old hunter candidly expressed their concern for how it would eventually continue with the dog, for finding suitable breeding animals became increasingly difficult, so cross with the small Norwegian Elkhound are often arrested as a makeshift. It now fell sharply towards the end of the dog remains, which was a development that bitterly condemned by many hunters among the peasantry, but the kennel people still turned a deaf ear. The purebred Norwegian Elkhound seemed to them to be the only salvation.

However, it was not impure blood of the Norwegian Elkhound that bothered me. But that kennelmen who dwelt in the north and had the opportunity to both listen to the old hunters’ warnings and to ensure themselves a cage rapidly the last remnants of Jämthund tribe crowded out and destroyed, but they was doing something to save it, it worried me so much more.

I now began to press to go on the attack against the phenomena that threatened to eradicate the old dog still. Responses from those who felt stungna failed to appear not, and I was hastily writing taught me that I mixed in something that I do not understand. But at the same time, I receive many letters from people out in communities, who thanked for their comments finally was performed, and this spurred me on.

Since the press debate about the dying breed moved to Stockholm press was Count Bjorn von Rosen to help me, which meant a sudden twist in this unequal battle. After a personal meeting, during which we thoroughly went through it, we decided to seek contact with Swedish Spitz Dog Club of Ostersund, and for this organization until we put on our spring 1942 observations. Thanks to von Rosen’s authority as cynologists coupled with his diplomatic method of production, he succeeded almost in a trice convince Lace Dog Club’s management of the absurd and unsustainable in the current chaos that occurred and the need to save what was left of Jämthund blood.

This resulted in the Lace Dog Association with the vast majority supported the von Rosen and I propose that together we could develop a standard for the dying breed, as there would be described as Jämthund, and then enter the Swedish Kennel Club with a request to get it recognized as a breed.

The development of this standard, of course, encountered great difficulties. This is not least by the cynologists as a long history with the Norwegian Elkhound, was stuck in the rules already existed for this, and argued that this essentially only concerned a size issue. Bright signs of nose, cheeks and throat were then the most cynologists as part of foreign blood, while the other hand, I contended that these particular characters in the standard would be listed as characteristic of still dog, and that the animals took these characteristics should be favored by the standard.

Even now, six years after it all the time the dog was recognized as a breed and breeding could begin to run correctly, has the bright nature of the characters turned out and become so general, that it is now a very small number among the pedigree Jämthund that lack them. This speaks well for the homogeneity that is already to be found in the reborn race.

We must once and for all make clear to him that continues to dog as a breed considered, beginning in 1946, and that the dogs which were recognized as tribal, must be considered at least as good although they did not possess any blood lineage of pedigree Norwegian Elkhounds. For, at that time, we gratefully accept every animal that turned out to be carriers of the genetic material, which by systematic breeding to save a valuable dog material for posterity. And would this in this context refers to some noble lines, it should in fairness be those which come from tribes that forest rural hunters in the longest sought to preserve.

But one thing is certain that the faster and more enduring Jämthund at large and rugged land where he belongs and in the challenging yachts which often occurs, is its short-legged cousin far superior. And that was also this very characteristic of the old dog still has got the woodland moose that as long retain it. Or in other words still dog saved himself from destruction by its mettle. via aksellindstrom.se

There’s a warm, fuzzy feeling surrounding a spiritual connection between the Vallhund and the Jämthund. There’s a certain allure to all of this. It’s also deliciously ironic and depressing in that the highly regarded pedigreed dogs almost eradicated a valued and much more efficient local hunting strain, and in order to preserve the strain: the dogs themselves must be subjected to the pedigree system.