The Siberian Husky history begins quite some time ago in Russia. It is an ancient breed that, along with the Alaskan Malamute and the Samoyed, are descendant from the first sled dogs. The sled dogs that eventually became the Husky were domesticated by the Chukchi people in Siberia. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Russia sought to become a world power. This desire led the czar to send Cossack troops to Siberia to unsuccessfully subdue the Chukchis. The sled dogs allowed the regional natives to remain essentially untouchable.
During this time, there was a different set of events happening just across the channel in what is modern-day Alaska. During the 1909 All Alaska Sweepstakes Race, the Chuckchi Siberian Huskies that had been used by one team had been noticed by racing enthusiast Charles Fox Maule Ramsay. The following year, 1910, he directed his team's top driver, John "Iron Man" Johnson, to use the dogs, and they won the grueling 400-mile race. The second- and fourth-place teams were also Chukchi Huskies owned by Ramsay, and this placed the dog on the world map.
Just over a decade later, in 1925, a diphtheria epidemic all but leveled Nome, Alaska. Had it not been for a courageous battalion of some 150 Huskies driven by 20 mushers, the sickness may have all but wiped out everyone for hundreds of miles in and around the town. The teams were able to deliver serum that by no other way could arrive in time. The 675-mile route across barren, icy terrain was done in under six days, and a statue was erected in NYC honoring the heroic effort.
During that decade, the USSR was plotting to politically destroy the dog. In 1930, exportation of the breed from Siberia was stopped. They renamed the breed the "Peoples Sled Dog," and in 1952, claimed that the Chukchi dog had never existed. They announced Russia was not where Siberian Huskies are from-- that this was a breed conceived by the U.S. that was in no way related to their dog. (To this day, many Russian dog "experts" cling to this bizarre view.) Nonetheless, Husky ancestors were acknowledged the world over as having come from a handful of dogs from Siberia.
The AKC apparently countered by formally recognizing the breed in 1930. Other world-class kennel clubs followed suit: the UKC recognized the breed as the "Arctic Husky," and Canada registered the breed in 1939. In 1933, 50 of the dogs accompanied U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Richard Byrd as part of Operation Highjump to travel around the entirety of Antarctica.
For a century or so, it was thought that the Chukchi Husky was no longer living in Siberia. In 2006, however, an article by Benedict Allen in Geographical magazine claimed that the bloodline remained alive and well where the origin of the Siberian Husky occurred.
