Linda Spurlin

Linda S. Spurlin is an American dog breeder from Alaska who developed the Alaskan Klee Kai, a small companion breed that resembles a miniature husky.^[1][2]

Developing the breed

The United Kennel Club's breed standard says the Alaskan Klee Kai was developed in Alaska by Linda Spurlin and her family as a companion-sized version of the Alaskan Husky. According to the standard, the Spurlins selected their dogs for appearance and soundness from the early 1970s through 1988.^[2] Wikipedia describes the breed as a mix of Alaskan Husky with smaller amounts of Siberian Husky, American Eskimo Dog and Schipperke.^[1] Trademark records from 1991 give her home town as Wasilla, Alaska, as does a fan wiki.^[3][4]

Spurlin's own history of the breed, "The World of the Alaskan Klee Kai," is posted on the website of the Alaskan Klee Kai Association of America. A breeder's website reprints it with her permission.^[5][6] In it she writes that in the mid-1970s, while visiting her husband's relatives in Oklahoma, she took home a small gray-and-white female husky called "Curious." She later learned that the dog descended from an accidental mating of a small dog and an Alaskan Husky owned by her brother-in-law and his wife in Fairbanks. In the early 1980s her brother-in-law stopped breeding and sold his little dogs to her. With them came the advice to "breed the best, and cull the rest," which she says she then followed strictly.^[5] Wikipedia attributes the same advice to her brother.^[1]

Naming and release to the public

Spurlin writes that she sold the first of her small huskies in 1987, as a Christmas gift for Eileen Gregory. A flood of letters, telephone calls and newspaper reporters followed.^[5] She says she took the name "Klee Kai" from Eskimo words meaning "little dog." The American Kennel Club describes it as coming from Alaskan Athabaskan words with that meaning.^[5][7] The UKC dates the breed's release to the public to 1988.^[2]

On 19 February 1991 Linda S. Spurlin of Wasilla applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register KLEE KAI as a trademark for "alaskan miniature huskies" (serial 74140267). The application was abandoned on 27 July 1992 after an Office action went unanswered, so the name was never registered.^[3] See also Spurlin trademarks. According to the UKC, the breed's name was changed from Klee Kai to Alaskan Klee Kai in 1995, to mark its place of origin.^[2]

Retirement and recognition

According to Spurlin, the breed was first incorporated in Alaska in 1990 under the name "Klee Kai of Alaska," and her files show a first contact with the American Kennel Club in 1988.^[5] In January 1995 she stopped breeding and flew with nine of her remaining dogs to Mrs. Gregory's kennels in Colorado, leaving eighteen years of work in Gregory's hands. The breed's parent club and offices then moved to Colorado.^[5][6]

The breed was recognized by the American Rare Breed Association in 1995, according to the fan wiki,^[4] and by the United Kennel Club on January 1, 1997.^[2] The American Kennel Club accepted it into its Foundation Stock Service in October 2020 and now lists it in its Miscellaneous Class.^[7] Breeds in that class remain in the Foundation Stock Service until the AKC board accepts them for regular status.^[8]

Note: Sources ^[6] and ^[5] reproduce Spurlin's own account, and ^[4] is a fan wiki. Details that appear only in those sources are her recollection or community-edited content rather than independently verified facts.