Our Malamute kennel

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Kennel Noatak – work for type

 

Kennel Noatak started breeding alaskan malamutes in 1989. Our  malamutes mostly goes back to the first norweigan dogs (Tote-Um and Topkok) with a touch of Barrenfield (USA) and Cold Valley (Belgian). Some breedings has been with males with Storm Kloud background.
We have managed to breed dogs which function socially good and becomes proven workers. To further improve good type and the working abilities in our breeding, we have contacts and cooperation around the world with other working kennels. We emphesize the working ability but keep the standard in mind, breeding for polar traits and type.

 

Our breeding philosophy

What we look and breed for in our malamutes, beside working abilities, polar function and type is good temperament, health and soundness.

 

Temperament

Good temperament is a must in all activities with our dogs, both when we work with bigger teams, (14 – 20 dogs), on tourist teams or when participating in races.

Important to get the dogs socially harmonic and functional are that they from puppy age learn to socialize with other dogs, meets a lot of people and  other animals on our farm. Important is also that clear borders is put, so the dogs knows what we expect from them.

To keep our dogs happy and relaxed it´s important to let them be active in different ways.

 

Healthy and sound

To get good malamutes both with working attitude and ability we breed with healthy parents and we look at the inbreeding percentage. With a combination of line breeding and out-crossing we are trying for an excellent breed result. We follow the recommendations of the Swedish Kennel Club (SKK) and the swedish malmute club.

Our dog keeping emphasize the dogs natural needs of food, exercise, shelter and social wellfare.

Good worker

During a winterseason (autumn training and races) our adult dogs run between 3500-6000 km. To manage those distances the dogs must stand the training, having the desire to pull and be well built. Furthermore they must have the polar traits which is needed to stand temperatures, sometimes lower than -40 degree C, and snowstorms in the mountains.

Another way to judge the working abilities is to participate in races (preferably over longer distances with weight in the sled) or to make tests/merits.  During the last 20 years our dogs has been raced and won many clubchampionships (Swedish polar dog club, norweigan polar club and the swedish malamute club) in middle and long distance races. Now we have six working sled dog champions and three earlier which has left us. We have had three dogs which has becomed the swedish “Malamute of the year”. We also had the first malamute ever, who got the titel Swedish polar champion. Our malamutes was the first all-malamute team ever to finish a 600 km race (2013) In summertime we also use them in short dryland tours, mountain tours and backpacking.

Our malamutes are used to dogsledding with tourists, from a few hours up to 9 day tours where we  sled in the mountain with a group from 2 persons up to 10. On those tours the tourists drive ”their own” team.

 

Good movement

Since the malamute is a bit heavier sleddog , it´s very important  with good movements. To have an effective and tiredless trot in balance, is the most desired gait which we also emphesize in our breeding.

The apperance - showing

Our opinion, and goal of breeding, comes from our interpretation of the standard, and how our malamutes are used as real working dogs in a partly arctic environment. One way to measure if we have succeded  in our breeding, and how much our interpretion of the standard agree with others interpretions of the standard, is to show the dogs.

Happiness is when a good working dog also succed in shows. Through the years we have had 14 showchampions and some of them became both swedish and norweigan showchampions. We have also managed to win about 30 BOB and BOS and some BIS.

But still ”show is show”, and for us it´s further most, an occasion to see other dogs and socialize with people, who share the same interest.

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