KAYA - Northern Inuit

Yesterday we added a new addition to our family.
We got Kaya from the RSPCA.
She is a Northern Inuit, which is basically a combination of 3 different breeds...The Siberian Husky, the Malamute and the German Shepherd.
She is very similar to Jake, the dog we recently laid to rest, but he was a Utonagon...same 3 breeds mixed together, so basically the same dog, but with a different name.....confusing? Very!!
She is also very similar to the British Timber dog and the Tamaskan...
They all come under the category as 'Wolf dogs' for obvious reasons.
Kaya was listed as a Northern Inuit by the RSPCA so I'm going to go with that! 
To be honest it's all rather vague, but I will do my best to explain it to you...

I'll give you a bit of the history, but trust me, it is really confusing. This is what I have uncovered in my research.

It all started with a woman called Edwina Harrison. She had her own vision of a type of dog she wanted to create. She had no intention of creating a breed, just one woman trying to make a dog that fit HER idea of the perfect dog. She wanted the dog to look like a wolf but be easy to train and to be great with families. She imported some husky/type dogs from the US and other parts of Europe to be bred with her already developing stock of malamutes, german shepherds, and huskies mixes. The original lines are not known, and Eddie is no longer alive to be able to clarify just what happened in the beginning. It was suggested that she also imported a Wolf dog from Canada, but this has never been confirmed.

After she had already begun this process, she started to have help caring for her dogs, and of course, some puppy buyers. These other people saw how well this breed was taking off and set to it to actually make it a breed. At first they called them Wolf Hybrids, but later was renamed the Northern Inuit dog. It is still unknown  if there is actually any wolf in them. Some say there was a high percentage of wolf, others say low, and others yet say that there is none at all. 
A few years into the creation of the new breed, some of the founding breeders started to have disagreements in how the breed was progressing. Some thought the look wasn't the way it should be, some disagreed with others breeding practices, and others thought that they needed to continue adding in new lines.
(this is where it gets confusing)
So a number of them left and started to breed their own dog, the Utonagon...basically the same dog, just a different name.

The 'Utonagan group' had its own bit of trouble with unethical breeders and the mixing in of "bad lines".  
Unfortunately, during all this confusion, some really bad health issues started to pop up, including epilepsy in a few different lines and so there was another split....

Following the split of Utonagans, one woman that split off was Ms Lynn Sharkey. She took her Utonagans and moved away and started her own mix of breeds...these became the Tamaskans. Not much is really known about this. The breed never took off in the UK because of the health concerns. Some say that she was the one to introduce the epilepsy lines into Utonagans. I do not know for sure. Nor do I know if she used any of the Utonagan lines with epilepsy to begin the Tamaskan breed.

However, I do know that Tamaskans in the states are doing really well.

So back to the Northern Inuits. During the same time as all the Utonagan politics were happening, the ones that remained with 'Northern Inuits' began having their own issues. Mainly, they were fighting about whether to add in new lines and also some of the members just flat out were not getting along. So the Northern Inuit Society had yet another two splits over the years, one became The Inuit Dog Association, and the other was the British Inuit club
(you still with me?? lol)

The woman who founded The Inuit Dog Association ended up getting kicked out of the club due to some really bad practices.

Just to make things even more confusing....More recently the British Timber dog Society has been formed. The BTD is  a cross between the Utonagon and Northern Inuit. A little Czech Wolf dog and a little Sarloos were used initially. The BTD claim to have used the best health and temperament checked lines to get where you find the breed today.