INTERVIEW WITH LIZ HARRELL JULY 1995:

copyright by Madeleine Smith

August/September 4, 1995

Transcribed by Puller Lanigan

Note:  Madeleine B Smith sent Liz Harrell a small tape recorder and asked her to talk about some of the original imports into the United States.  Puller Lanigan transcribed the tapes.

Liz Harrell:  Okay, here goes, this will be a stream of consciousness sort of thing and quite frequently I'll be reminded of something when I'm way past the original victim and so you'll have to go back and forth in order to get whole story. That is assuming you want all of it.

Okay, starting with the Males. There are four of them listed here all with the prefix "Azuma".  Azuma was the prefix for Mayhew.  Mayhew spent a lot of time in Japan and when he came back to the states, he stopped at our place in Orange County and left his four dogs there for some time. He had at that time one male, which was -1 forget which one now, I'll have to go look that up - anyhow he had one male and three bitches. Now, the three bitches were used for breeding but I don't see them listed here anywhere and so probably this was done after the AKC accepted us and they weren't therefore, registered with ACA. I know that all three of those bitches produced because one was sold to Annie Powell, in Long Beach and she occasionally went by the name of Annie Doane. Anyhow, I know she bred that animal to one or more of the males that she had at their place in Long Beach. The other one went Pat Flynn in Chicago and I know she bred, because she was a big producer.

The four dogs were all substandard in size. I doubt that any of the three bitches made the bottom of the standard. The male probably made 25" and he was by far the best of the lot. They were very light boned, very foxy - all of them were pale in color. That is like fawn, with just a little bit of black on the muzzle and what have you, their ears were up, tails curled, they all looked sound but they were definitely not the type of Akita we were used to looking at.

Now going a little bit further down the line we have a dog named "Fuji Akashi". This dog was brought back to the states with its mate, by Sergeant Arlen and they settled north of Los Angeles in the Lompoc area because he was attached to that military group there. Fuji Akashi was shown in Japan and became a Grand Champion over there. He was a big dog, extremely powerful, extremely - um, how shall I put it, DOMINANT - um at the missile base there they had walk on scales that were calibrated regularly and Arlen walked Fuji on the scales - he weighed 140 lbs. at that time and he was not fat. But he was agile as hell, because in that area there are companies that grow flowers for seed and during the off season, Arlen would take Fuji out into their fields, which were full of mice and Fuji would catch mice with his feet! You know, that paw was HUGE and when it came down on a mouse - he was a goner. Anyhow, as I say he was extremely agile. Arlen was a great jazz fan and he used to put some good New York jazz on his phonograph and he and Fuji would dance around their living room. Fuji would be in on his back feet with his paws over Arlen's shoulders. The other side of Fuji was - you didn't mess with him or he would let you know RIGHT NOW that you were not ever gonna do it a second time. He was extremely dominant dude, and yet he was very pliable. At the time that this all occurred, I had a sports car called an AC which came from England and I have somewhere in my boxes of pictures -1 have a picture of Fuji sitting in the driver seat with his front paws on the steering wheel and a pair of real jazzy shades on. And he looks for all like he's gonna go out and race any minute.

Now I appeared on a couple of TV shows with him and the guy that handled him, because Arlen was working, was a guy named Doug Markham who was really hung up on Akitas and particularly liked Fuji and his mate. He and Arlen were long time friends and the next dog is called Fuji Go Fusa Koizumi - and that was Markham's dog. Now there couldn't be two more dissimilar types than Fuji Akashi and Fuji Fusa. Fuji Fusa was down near the bottom of the standard. He was a good fawn color with a black mask, white on the chest and feet - a real sweetheart of a dog. The only thing he got testy about was if anybody messed with his food (I'm talking about other dogs now, people could take the food away) but if another dog came up and tried to eat out of his dish. He got decked right now. He never hurt anybody, but he would lie right down on top of them and roar at them and let them know that this was not an acceptable procedure.

Doug Markham eventually went back to his home in Oklahoma. Midwest City to be exact and while there Fuji sired a litter for him of 10 whites. Now this is EXTREMELY unusual, because white is recessive. Probably it was due to the fact that in Fuji's background are the Boyd dogs. Boyd was in Japan long before WWII and he was married to a Japanese lady and he raised Akitas under the name "Bahi" and he raised primarily whites, reds and fawns. And a good many of them had no mask by the way.

The next one we're going to talk about is Goro Nishiki Go which belonged to the Kam's. Camille and her father Ben, and her brother Walter, and her mother Emma, who was divorced from Ben and that's how come her name is Emma Young rather than Emma Kam. Anyhow, when Walter was in the service, he was in the Merchant Marine and he went to Japan and this was after WWII. So Ben gave him some money and when he was over there he bought four Akitas, one male - Goro Nishiki and three bitches. We'll get to the bitches later. Anyhow, he bought them at a pet shop in Tokyo and brought the dogs back. Goro Nishiki was excessively coated but I don't know that you'd want to call him a longhair, he'd probably fit in real well with what's being done out there today. He had a very plumy tail nevertheless. He was a heavy boned dog, not terribly big. The first time we had an Akita match in this country we had a guy for a judge who had judged Akitas in Japan when he was over there in the Army of occupation. He's a judge now in this country. Anyhow, we talked to him after the show, which by the way amassed a whole number of Akitas - 22 to be exact. So we asked him, what did he see over there, how did our Akitas shape up, etc., etc., and he said that most of the dogs that he judged, which included Kongo - were bulkier, heavier, larger....he said more on the order of Goronishiki although he felt he had a little bit too much coat. Our dogs, we kind of like looked at our dogs because they were definitely different - lighter of bone, narrower of head, just leaner, I guess you'd have to say. Of course, we were extremely naive at that time and didn't realize it - a 9 month old Akita does not compete with a several year old Akita, because the young one just hasn't grown up yet. Well, we learned that later.

Anyhow, Goronishiki produced several litters for the Kam's one of which was quite notable - it had, I believe 9 pups in it of which only one had a normal coat; and at that time they had bred Goronishiki to Fukuchiya. Which was one of the dogs Walter brought - a female that Walter brought back with him. Anyhow, I had never seen a longhaired Akita before, so when I looked at this litter, I was absolutely astounded because only one of them looked like an Akita and all the rest looked like Chows. You know...so I wrote to this man in Japan who was a representative for winning the large - contracting - they built things - bridges, buildings, etc. all over the world and he worked for them on a worldwide basis so he was bilingual and he was also a judge for Akitas and a long-time breeder of Akitas for the Akiho Club - no, not Akiho - Akikyo! Akiho was the one that's based up in Northern Japan, Akikyo was based elsewhere. Anyhow, I sent him the pedigree on this litter and asked him if he could be of any help. I'd been introduced to him through correspondence by the Boyds and the Altees. Anyhow, he wrote back and said that any time that you have a "double up" of this one particular dog - which occurred in this litter - you're going to get mostly longhair because this dog was a longhaired animal. The dog that was doubled up on is named Senzan. I kept track -1 was registrar at this time -1 kept track of the dogs as they came in and I ran across another one that came to the states and moved down to Georgia. And this dog was also a grandchild of Senzan, so I kept in touch with the guy and when he bred his dog and bitch together, which by the way was not a double up - and they both had normal coats - they were extremely good looking dogs, but he had several longhairs in that litter and decided not to breed any more because of it. So Senzan definitely was a gene carrier. Now when I say longhair -1 mean that the tail hair I measured when they were adult, nine inches long, the hair at the shoulders, the withers - 8-10 inches; hair inside the ear and outside the ear as tufts, feathering on the back of all four legs and incidentally this is a throwback to a breed called the Karafuto. This is a native Japanese dog that looks a lot like an Akita but is not built like an Akita; it's a leaner dog, more along the lines of a Belgian Malinois.

Anyhow, the Karafuto - these animals were used for work a lot and they were on -remember when the geophysical year was and the Japanese went down to the South Pole and were down there for quite awhile? Well, the dogs they took with them were Karafuto. They're good sled dogs. Getting back to the longhairs.-.that was my first experience with longhair and now when I know how much has gone wrong with the breed, longhair doesn't seem to be quite the crucial problem it was. The longhaired pups are cuter than the regular pups, they sell as pets real easy, they're hell to take care of because their fur picks up twigs and anything else that's lying around, so they need a lot of grooming. But this particular gene exists in these dogs and you might just as well face the fact that that's the way it is.

Next we have Great Tiger of Tokyo Chikuken. Now, I personally, did not know this dog, however, Tokyo Chikuken is something to discuss because they were the epitome of a pet mill. They advertised on TV. all over Japan. You could buy a pup, but you never got the whole dog until you paid them back puppies. And so you might spend a couple of $300 for a puppy, but you had to pay back pups from maybe two or three litters, before that dog was yours. And they were not breeders, what they were  producers and they sold these dogs all over the world. Now one of their big offices was in London, they had one in New York, one in Los Angeles, they were pretty well represented in this country too until so many complaints were filed against them, the Japanese government finally closed them up. So whenever you see Tokyo Chikuken hung on a dog, you want to think about how correct that pedigree is. I don't think there's too many of them around anymore, they're long gone dead, but they could be grandparents of the dogs that are around right now.

Now the next dog is Gaio Kushu of Tojo Kensha. Kensha just means like "house" -that's the kennel name. This dog and its mate were brought back to this country by some people named Schaefer and they settled first in Nebraska. Some place in the Midwest there and then they moved on down to Georgia. He was still in the service. This particular dog was a big fawn with a black mask, white on the chest and feet - a tough dude. He was not one you were gonna run up to and throw your arms around his neck. He's just not like that, he wanted his space. He was in my opinion, a pretty good looking dog. He looked to be sound. He was totally different from his mate, which I'll get to eventually when we work in the females. She was totally different - she wasn't built like him, she wasn't - her attitude was different, it was like they came from two different worlds or maybe two different breeds.

The next dog is Homare No Maiku Go. This was a dog I got to know real well. When we were still in St. Paul, we knew we wanted to get a dog and we were taking Dog World, etc., etc. and we saw this ad in Dog World. The ad had a picture of Kongo in it, which looked pretty impressive to us. Of course there was nothing there that would give you a clue as to how big this dog was. But anyhow, when we got out to California, we called the Fishers, who had put that ad in and they lived out in Azuza and we lived on the coast, so it was quite a trip. But we went out there and of course, they weren't home - so we walked up and peered over their back fence and there was no doubt about what Homare was - because he looked a lot like Kongo in many ways. But there was a little red dog with him and we thought, "Hmmm, that's interesting, they've got two different breeds." So anyhow, we kept on calling them and finally got them home one day and went out and damned if that little red one wasn't an Akita too! And what's more those two dogs were related. So anyhow, we got to know them quite well and learned about the Akita through them and that's how we met the Kam's because they were in infancy of Akitas in this country too. Homare was the dog that I feel had the best attitude of any Akita I've ever met. He was alert, smart, big, strong, powerful, but a really genial nice animal. Now, he could be tough - um, a guy came over to service Jan Fisher's sewing machine and he walked in her living room without knocking or ringing the bell and her new born son was in the playpen in the living room and Homare stood up on his hind legs and pushed the guy down on the floor and stood over him. Now he didn't bite him - he just held him there because he wasn't supposed to come in that way, so Jan rushed in and rescued the guy called the company and the company fired him because that's against their rules to enter a place without at least announcing yourself first. So what I'm saying is he was no shy little tulip - or anything like that, he was completely sure of himself.

Now they had a kid named, Jamie -1 think his name was. And he was preschool, but getting close and he would put Homare through the obedience routine and Homare would do and just like he was laughing and having a good time. He was a really good dog in my opinion. Now we ordered a pup from them and they eventually had a litter and it's from this litter that we got our first Akita. And I don't know why - the breeding should have been a lot better than it was on paper, but it wasn't. I guess it's because there are too many ersatz animals mixed up in there so that the line breeding that should have produced something, just didn't. But that's how we all learn, you know.

The next dog is Kanpuzan. He was one of the later imports brought over by Linderman. She and her husband went to Japan on a trip and they brought Kanpuzan back and they didn't have him very long. Eventually Camille got Kanpuzan and I think he ended up with Marti Doweling eventually. He was a brindle with a white shawl, white on the chest and feet. He looked to me to be a very sound dog. I never did see him act up or be nasty or anything like that, but what really disappointed me -1 think he's probably one of the best imports of that time - and what really disturbed me was that these people that owned him did not look at his background at all and they bred to various bitches and got nothing, which is par for the course. If they had taken advantage of what was behind this dog, I think they probably would have produced some pretty good animals.

Next is Ketket's Tiger Bear. A small brindle brought over by his owner -'just a minute I have to look that up, well, I can't find where I wrote down her name, but she was a handler and she brought the dog back with her. Showed him around the Chicago area, because that's where she lived and he had 9 points before he was finally disqualified for being too short. He was a brindle, lean build like most of the import dogs that came over at that time. He was like Mayfield's dog - a derivative of Azuma's Zakura and from that particular lineage if you go back and check your Japanese pedigrees, you'll see that you go back two, three, four generations and the size and the bulk gradually disappeared from these dogs. It might be because of a conscious effort of trying to make a totally different kind of animal which is what they were up to over there for some time and that might have something to do with it. But a good many of those that came from Azuma's Zakura who was quite a dog himself, was never the lesser quality and smaller in stature.

Next is Kinsho Go. This dog was - oh let's see, how can I say this? He and his littermate, Teruhime Go, were purchased in Japan by two guys that were over there in the Army of occupation and they were friends. They went over to this kennel and Zapia brought Kinsho and Tom Hamilton bought the other one. I was lucky enough to meet both dogs. Tom's female, I'll get to when we get to the female part. But anyhow, she was a good sized animal, a real sweetheart of a dog, she traveled all over the world with these people as he went from one area to another as part of his service and when they were in the Philippines, somebody poisoned her, which really made me sad because this was a NEAT dog. She was the first Akita to be shown at Westminster and when he sent the entry in, I guess whoever was taking entries didn't have any idea how big an Akita was, anyhow when they got to the show, they had - it was a bench show - they had put aside a bench for this dog that would have fit a Papillion very well. So they had to do some fast shifting. Anyhow, she won a lot of hearts because of her really good attitude. Kinsho, on the other hand didn't fare quite so well. He had the same attitude as Tom's bitch and a Japanese asked to show him, so Zapia said, "Fine, go ahead show him" and so they showed him and he became a Grand Champion. This was much prestige for this Japanese handler, by the way, so then Zapia who wasn't what you could call a compassionate type, fired the guy and this lost face for him. So to even up the store, he spent his last two-three weeks with Kinsho teaching him how to be nasty and he got to be pretty nasty. He came back to the states with the dog and gave or sold, I don't know which, the dog to the Kam's and they couldn't keep him because of his attitude. So they ended up placing him with a Mrs. Guarino at Lake Tahoe. And she put him on a 3' chain, chained to a tree and that's where the dog lived. Now he was considered by the county up there to be - how shall I put it, I don't want to say vicious because I don't think he ever bit anybody - but he was rager. When I took my Koko, which was his daughter, to breed back to him...he ripped her up pretty good and of course, Mrs. Guarino who was real close fisted with every nickel she ever got her hands on, didn't bother taking her to a vet so I got back a dog that had severe infection in her ear from being chewed on. But it's interesting to note that even when he was bred to his own daughter, the animals that came out of that were sweethearts and not raging biters.

The next dog is Major. Major was a big red, came back from Japan with the - oh, what was their name? They settled in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts because he was in the service to and there's something around Buzzard's Bay....

Major was a big red male brought back to the states by some people named Pattee. They settled in Buzzard's Bay and they brought with them a female named Cindy, that was a litter sister to Fuji Akashi. Major was red with a big head, tall, lean, very much like the general description of the Dewa dogs; long, lean and lanky. Cindy was his exact opposite, she was broad, heavily built, had a beautiful head, extremely strong dog, a good coat - if you were to see this dog running around in a park, you'd say this was a REAL classy animal, 'cause she was. Now I'll go into her more when we get to the females. Major was, now I'm just telling you what the dog's looked like, see? I met the Pattee's at the Arlen's house because they were friends with the Arlens. When they came back to the states and I saw both of the dogs there. Major was a very beautiful red color, in fact I think - in fact I know I sent a picture of Mr. Pattee with both of the dogs to Rhode Island. So know you got it there some place, anyhow, the biggest fault you could find with Major was that he had what we used to call a "two finger chest", in other words you could barely get two fingers in between his front legs, his chest was that narrow. Now he and Cindy were absolute opposites and they weren't related on paper either, so when they were bred, it was interesting to see who took after who, because the majority of the dogs reflected Cindy's coloring and they were split half and half. Prince Jo that Barbara Miller had, much more resembled Major's side of the family than Cindy's. Sheba that Bettye Krug, resembled more the mother. They only made that one breeding, but three or four of those dogs were used for further breeding.

Now we'll go down to Shiro Boko Go Bahi. This was a red animal with no mask, he was produced by Boyd that owned the Bahi kennels. Boyd primarily bred for reds, whites and fawns and he seemed to be quite in to no mask, because a lot of his dogs had no masks. Now Shiro was used for breeding - oh, he belonged to some people that brought him and his mate back to the states and settled in Tucson, Arizona. And while there they bred one or two litters, I think the one litter only had a couple of pups and the other litter had four or five pups, so it wasn't a big production. The female that they brought with them was Yuki and she was pure white, also from Boyd's background. Boyd is sort of important in a way because at this particular time in the history of the breed, a guy named Charlie Rubenstein who was an AK.C judge for Boxers and was at one time a breeder of Boxers, he was in Japan - went to Japan a lot - but he was over there in the service as well and he decided that there was a big future in this country for Akitas. But Boyd's dogs who were extremely popular because of their good looks and nice attitude, he didn't like the idea of Boyd being that popular, so he and his buddy got together and wrote a standard for the Akita which eliminated whites. And though quite a few people went to bat for the Akita at that time, including the guy who owned Dog World at that time. Will Judy - um, the AKC was relentless and would not change that original submitted standard. So if you're wondering why whites were excluded, now you know. And Charlie Rubenstein was very active in shipping dogs to Japan and from Japan. He would go over there on occasion and travel around, pick up dogs and bring 'em back to the states. Now nothing from Japan could be registered, see, including breeds like Boxers, Danes, what have you, because the AKC didn't recognize them. But he would bring back dogs that he could get a could price for that were unusual and Akitas of course, was one breed he messed around with. Now, in Japan, salesmen would travel, especially in those days it was tough to travel. But anyhow in the times of the year when it was possible to travel, these guys would go out - salesmen - and as a side line, they'd buy up parts of litters, take them back to Tokyo and sell them to a pet shop or what have you. Well, Rubenstein got in on this and he picked up two dogs. One was Tochifuji and the other one was Hozan. Now I was registrar at that time and I knew a couple of people in Japan that could speak English and that were privy to the three different big clubs over there including the Japan Kennel Club. And I discovered that Mr. Rubenstein paid $10 for these dogs. Ten bucks a piece -and he took them down to the Japan Kennel Club and had pedigrees run off and registered them with him as the breeder. He brought both of those dogs back to the states, Tochifuji was owned by some people named Judd. In southern California and Camille Kam owned Hozan. Well, when he got these dogs, they were the last of litters, you know, so if there were any really good dogs in the litter, they were long gone by the time Charlie got around to it. So I can tell you more about those two dogs later. However, I wanted you to know about Boyd and why the whites were excluded and I might point out that Charlie Rubenstein did _____ his head again and I understand he has done some importing when the AKC changed their attitude and allowed some dogs to be brought in, Charlie was right there ready to do business.

The Silver Crown Kuma Go, that's a dog that was brought back by a guy who studied to be a veterinarian at Pullman, Washington. He brought back Kuma and three bitches, they are all related to Kongo in one way or another and he had these animals with him at Pullman and he raised two or three litters there. During the time that he did this, he was sort of active in what club there was because there was - very few people were involved you know, you got a meeting of six people that was a REAL - you know - event. Well, he wrote a page explaining the problem of entropion, because it turned out that the dogs he brought back were carrying. So he wrote a full page article for the newsletter on entropion, what the thinking was at that time that caused it, how many dogs were involved and that this was something that everybody was involved in Akitas should look out for. He eventually became a veterinarian for the Atomic Energy group, back there in Tennessee, but he's been out of Akitas for a long time. I don't think he has any dogs of any kind at present time.

Now we go to Teddy Bear. Teddy Bear was a dog in Japan, he was brought back to this country by the person who bought him in Japan. While there, he bred a female that eventually came back to Petaluma, California and that litter - although it was produced in Petaluma - every once in awhile, people think that these dogs were imports. They weren't. The parents were imports, the litter was born stateside and in this litter was; Tom Cat, Tiger Lil, Star, oh, I can't remember all the names, but I'm sure you know who I'm talking about. Now, this dog figures prominently in the production of longhair and autoimmune diseases. And if you look up his pedigree, you will see that this dog has three close breedings in his background, so it's logical to think that one of these animals involved in these three close breedings, probably is the one that was carrying all this good stuff. He eventually, the owner took him to Arizona and although he produced several litters in Arizona, he died. It was an accident, he was still a very young dog at the time.

The next dog was Teruhide Go. He too was an import, he was a pinto, he belonged to a guy named Straiter, who bought him in Japan, came back to the states with Teruhide and a female that he bought over there. He raised one litter and then eventually, we bought, Al and I bought Teruhide from him. Teruhide was not a real tall dog, he was short of 26" but definitely well over 25" and he had a tight curled tail, nice small ears, he was really quite a dog, he earned in Japan - he earned his C.D. Straiter trained him himself and we had Teru until he died, he was a really nice animal but very different from the dogs that we had seen previously. If you go through the Meiyosho award book, the dog that looks the most like Teruhide is a dog named Muchi Go.

The next dog is Tosa Ryu an import brought to this country by Annie Powell who was located in Long Beach. He was a red, very very similar to Major. In other words, a big head, long, lean and lanky and a two-finger chest. She used him -1 don't really know how much she used him, but she used him a fair amount. Annie had quite a large kennel there in Long Beach and of course, this has nothing to do with the dogs, but it might give you an insight into the operation there. She called me up one day and said, she was a nurse by the way - a terminal - only worked on terminal cases, anyhow, she called me up one morning and said that her brother in Texas was extremely ill and she had to fly there to take care of him and she had only one week to get all this preparation done and get rid of all her dogs. And that she would sell them for $25 a piece just so they had a good home, so I called a friend of mine, Roger, he came over, he was a real estate agent and had a lot of free time, so I told him to go over and look at Annie's dogs. I explained the situation to him and I said we'll see what we can do. So, he went over there and he's smarter than I am, so Roger Wright counted the dogs - she had 40 dogs. So he said, well I'll take one of them and he said, you get busy and call up everybody and I'll even deliver them, if that's what it will take. In two days we placed 17 of those dogs. And Roger came over the following morning and he said, I hate to tell you this, we placed 17 dogs and I've got one, that's 18 and Annie's still got 40. So she had stashed them around the area and as we got rid of one, she'd bring another one in, until finally she only had the dogs that she could handle on her place and she called up and said, "thanks a lot, but no thanks" we're not selling any more and I'm not going to Texas. But Roger kept the one he took, he was a nice dog. A lot of these dogs - some of these dogs - were imports. Roger's was and as far as I know, the dog was never used for stud. A lot of the dogs were products of Tosa Ryu, oh yeah, that reminds me. This is another thing that might give you some insight and I don't know but what this happens all the time, but we had a club meeting at Annie's place and at that time she had three litters. -All three had been sired by Tosa Ryu, the bitches in question were either red or fawn and at the back of her property she had what was once a garage. And she had the puppies in this garage, and it turns out that she put all the puppies from all three litters together into this one pen and then she'd run the mothers in and out and let them nurse as much as they could at the time and I said to her, "but Annie, how can you tell those dogs apart, because they all look exactly alike, you know they're small, they're about 8 weeks old something like that and they're ALL the same color - they're all reds?" She said, "oh, what difference does it make? He's the father of all of them." <Laughter> Anyhow, this was before the AKC took us in tow, so that story was never told to the AKC but it sure opened up the eyeballs in a lot of people that were at that meeting that day, I'll tell you.

Okay, that's as much of the males as I'm going to go through at the present time. I will go back through and check all these names out with whatever information I have around here of the old time stuff and maybe add a third cassette. One thing I want to mention, Mayhew's dogs and several of the other dogs that were brought over at this time, early on, in other words, including that import that I liked, Kanpuzan, they all go back to a dog named Azuma's Zakura. And he goes back to Hachiman, a dog named Unyo, and what is interesting to me is that I looked these up in the Meiyosho award book, just to be sure of my statements, Hachiman was a big red, a brawny dude, big head, tight curled tail that was what they called a "drum tail" cause it went right up over his back, a sturdy dog and as each generation went by, they got shorter, leaner, lighter of bone and if you look at Azuma Zakura, you can still see remnants of Hachiman's head and his tail set, the back leg shape, that sort of thing. But with each passing generation, they lost bulk, width of chest, ribcage spring, the back legs got to be too, too straight, too light in bone, the chest withered down to the two-finger chest. I think this is interesting, if you look in the Meiyosho award book, you can follow as the years go by and the dogs that won, there's only one winner every year and sometimes not a winner in any specific year. But you'll notice that they changed, you can see that when they started bringing in the other strains, and also the other local breed, that they lost stature and they lost bulk. No broad chests on those current dogs. I know the Meiyosho award book is no longer in print, the one I've got is in real good shape, I think what I'll do is explore the possibility -1 don't want to ship this book out to anybody, cause too many of my books have disappeared that way including an Akikyo book in which Niki had made a lot of notes, you know, from translations, it's disappeared. It's probably in the living room of a woman over in Graham, but my chances of getting it back from her are pretty zip. So, I'm not going to ship out any books, however, I will pursue the possibility of getting some photographs made of the Meiyosho award book so you can see what it's like. The picture is on the left side and on the right side page is the pedigree and whatever big wins this dog made besides the big win in the Meiyosho.

Okay, this is tape #2, starts where the other one leaves off with Major and Cindy coming into this country with the Pattee's who then eventually settled in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts. The Pattee's were friends of the Arlens in Japan and their female, Cindy, was a littersister to the Arlen's Fuji. Cindy, I'll get into when I do the females, but she was a much better dog than her brother, no two ways about it. It's too bad that she was only bred to Major and nobody else. Because they weren't exactly compatible. If you look in the first Akita book that Edita Vander Lyn did, you'll see a picture in there of a sire and dam and a bunch of little puppies. Well, that's Major and Cindy and some of those puppies are like Barbara Miller's Prince Jo, Bettye Krug's Sheba, etc. They only bred this one litter, that's it.

The next dog is Shiro Boki Go Bahi. This dog was a red with no mask, I mean you have just a plain red mask, white on the chest and feet, a superb attitude. Nice big head, his picture is in that first book that Edita did too. He was produced by a guy named Boyd, who lived in Japan, was there and married to a Japanese lady, well before WWII. He had quite a reputation for breeding reds, whites and fawns. He's one that used Taro Go which was a dog I particularly liked over there. It was a big brindle that used to come to the shows fresh from hunting, full of mud and what have you and just totally wowed everybody and would walk off with one of the big prizes. Anyhow, this dog and the female, Yukihime Go Bahi were brought as a pair to this country by some people named Hall and they settled in the Phoenix area and when they decided to divorce, which happened to a lot of them by the way, I had just registered these two dogs. She called me and wanted to know if I knew anybody that would take them and I said, I will. So, I took both of them and I had at that time a sports car called an AC. I had taken the riders seat out so there would be more room up front and I put both of the dogs there because there was no place else to put them in that little car. We're coming home up Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu and I get stopped in a big line of traffic and fire engines are going by us on the outside -1 mean off the road, into the ditch sort of, but they're going like hell and making a lot of noise, and I didn't know these dogs and I thought - whoa, I'm going to be beheaded, this is the time it's going to happen. And both of these dogs are just as calm, like they went through this everyday, so what else is new. Anyhow, Shiro should have been used more than he was. These dogs were no kids when I got them, they were 6 and 7 years - not months. And although Shiro had done very well in the shows in Japan, we didn't try to show him here. I did try to use him for stud and we did, we managed to get one litter from him. All of which died during a Distemper epidemic. He produced while he belonged to the Hall's, he and Yuki produced one or two litters, down there which almost all of them were whites, because that's what she was. Whites and reds. And one of the offspring was shown. I know quite a bit, but then he was the only one going to the shows and the judges didn't know what to look for in a dog anyhow and they show all this time with both ears completely dropped - didn't know any better <Laughter>. One of the dogs from this issue, went up to the Frisco area and the guy up there used it for breeding quite a bit, but mostly he was just into selling puppies and not taking them out to show or anything like that. Anyhow, Shiro was a really nice dog that unfortunately didn't have a good opportunity to show what he could produce.

Okay, the next one in line is Silver Crown Kuma Go. This dog and three bitches were bought in Japan by a guy who eventually became a vet and studied for that position at Pullman. He bred Kuma to all three of those bitches and guess what? Entropion showed up, in fact it showed up in spades and his name was Lee Simmons, by the way. Anyhow, he wrote an article for the newsletter, the newsletter at that time consisted of one or two pages and he wrote a whole page about the problem of entropion and how it was very well seated in this particular part of the Akita breed. Now, his dogs go back - at least the male does - in fact I think one of the bitches does too, to Kongo. Whether that's got anything to do with it or not, I have no idea, because I've seen an awful lot of Kongo offspring that didn't have that problem and of course, now we know it occurs for reasons other than genes. So, it's very difficult to say whether - how this was - except for this factor. Since I was the registrar, I got to register all of these dogs and see their pedigrees and Simmons sold several of these offspring to other people that were at Pullman and were learning how to be a vet and they produced three generations there and this problem showed up in several of those breedings, so I would say -1 would be very comfortable in saying this is an inherited proposition in this group. One woman that bred a lot from this line was Marge Rutherford, Maru Akitas, and she had dogs from him both males and females, so what she produced is probably a pretty good indication of what those dogs were carrying. Anyhow, Simmons' is out of it so are all the other vets. Simmons ended up working for the Atomic Energy Group there in Tennessee and I don't' know happened to the rest o them.

The next one is Teddy Bear of Toyohashi Seiko. This dog and one or two bitches was brought to this country by a woman and she stayed around Pasadena for a little while, then she went down to live in Arizona. Teddy Bear was used for breeding in Japan and the litter was - the female that he bred there, was brought back to this country and the litter was born in Petaluma. And that's where Tom Cat, Tiger Lil, Star, Kabuki, all of these dogs came from that litter. Teddy Bear was used for stud by Pete Lagus, when he went to Arizona, I believe, the woman produced a litter with her female as well. He unfortunately died in Arizona when he was still a very young dog. Anyhow, what he produced mainly, in one generation - occasional longhairs, the most important thing is that Teddy Bear was a closely bred animal. If you look in the first Linderman Funk book you'll see a pedigree on this dog and you'll notice that there are double up's in his background now, whether this is what brought it on or not, I don't know, but many - let me put it this way - several autoimmune problems go right straight back to this dog.

Next one is Teruhide Go which was a dark grey and white, not quite a pinto type, but with a lot of white on his body and the grey had a fair amount of black guard hairs in it, so it was quite dark. He was extremely well balanced, not a big dog, but very macho build on him. He had a unique temperament, in that he would let the squirrels come and eat out of his dish, or the birds - whatever, as long as he was through eating, he didn't care what they did. But if they approached the plate while he was still eating, he roared at them. He was owned by - oops, just a minute. Teruhide was owned in Japan by a guy named Straiter. Straiter showed him over there and he did become a champion. Straiter also trained him in obedience and he got an obedience degree from the Japan Kennel Club. He appeared in some of the Akita books over there. I had one of them, in fact I probably still have it someplace, but I don't know where it is now. Anyhow, Straiter brought back this dog and a brindle back to this country and he was going to, like so many of the GI's over there - he was going to cut a wide swath in the Akita racket over here. He moved to near San Diego and adverse situations - he produced one litter with the brindle bitch. And by the way, she was absolutely, 100% totally different from Teruhide and it was interesting, they had a litter of about 10 and so many of them took after Teru in all respects except once in a while the brindle coloring came through. I'll talk about the female, when I get to the female section. Anyhow, Straiter decided he couldn't keep either one of these dogs so we boarded his bitch for him for over a year while he made up his mind what he was going to do. But we bought Teru and he produced a couple of litters for us, some of which were really good dogs, but he was so far removed from everything else that was around here that in using him for breeding, this was the outcross to top all outcrosses. He was particularly well put together, his - when he gaited he gaited with such power, his topline was completely level he was a real easy dog to have around. One time I had a female in heat and she was in a pen down below my kitchen window and he was in the house with me and he put his nose up in the air and smelled her smell, he jumped up in my kitchen sink and was going out through the kitchen window to get to that girl and I whacked him one on his butt with my broom, he turned around and looked at me and he roared at me! You know, sort of a "don't you do that again" <Laughter> but I won, he got down out of the sink and went back to his pen without any further incident. That was the nastiest the dog ever was to us in his whole life. Let's see, whose the next one on the list here. Oh, I think it's Toryu - no Tochi Fuji Go. He was brought over here to this country by a guy named Rubenstein. Charlie Rubenstein. Who made a big business of transporting dogs between the U.S. and Japan. Rubenstein was cleared to judge Boxers at one time, but he was always in some kind of hot water for finagling. He was a great con-artist. Now, in Japan, salesmen that were on the road selling stuff, they would pick up dogs from various breeders and take them back to Tokyo with them and sell them in the pet shop or sell them to whoever was coming around looking for pups. And usual price for these dogs was about $10 American, well, Rubenstein picked up two in this manner, Tochi Fuji and oh, what was the other - the one that Camille had....I can't remember his name right now - Hozan! Yeah. I was registrar at the time and you can imagine my surprise when I saw the paperwork on these dogs, listed Charlie Rubenstein as the breeder of both animals, so it's anybody's guess who was the breeder. I ended up having to register both of them, because of a lot of pressure put on me, I didn't want do it, but that's how it had to be. In Hozan's case it didn't matter much because he was a monorchid producer and Camille got rid of him because she didn't need all that bad health. Tochi Fuji on the other hand went to some people named, Judd and they used him for stud a fair amount and he is very prominent in the background of the PRA animals. The family that goes back from Perfect Pearl and others. Of the two dogs, Hozan was the better animal by far. Tochi Fuji was not particularly amiable. His attitude needed ironing out, believe me! He was tall, he was red, he had a fairly good head, he absolutely no chest at all, his front legs were real close together, the feet turned out at the bottom, he 's just not what you could call a real class animal. And of course the fact that we saw what he was producing didn't help a lot. But the Judd's kept him until I think he died of old age. I think one of them had him even after they had a divorce.

Now the next one in line is an import named Toryu. He was owned by some people named Nishioka. He was sent to them by some family member in Japan. This was a very good quality animal. Not tall, but well built, nice head, well balanced, red with a fair amount of white and black mask. I saw him at an Akita show put on by the Akita breeders when these two judges from Japan came over here on other business, one was a son of a drug company producer in Japan and he and his friend were here to check out a disease that was going through their chickens over there. And chickens figure big in their diet so they had to do something about that, consequently they spent quite a lot of time at the University's agricultural school there in Southern California. And they gave them the formulas so they could go back to Japan and manufacture whatever medication was necessary to clear up their chickens. While they were here they judged and Akita show that had 90 some Akitas in it. This Toryu was best of breed of the young dogs, because at the time the show was won, he was about 18 months old. He was really definitely worth that award, cause I figured I had one of my dogs in there that was pretty good too, and I thought that Toryu would probably beat him especially under the Japanese judges, didn't turn out that way, my dog won best of breed and he was one of those I talked to you about earlier, that came from the Altee's that had entropion in the litter. Well Kita Zakura didn't have entropion, but he was from that litter, we never produced with him. Anyhow, it was quite interesting because Japanese paper came out and took pictures and he was talked about as a grand champion because of that one win. Anyhow, getting back to Toryu, I saw some of the pups that he produced for the Nishioka's and he was definitely prepotent for himself. Out of a litter often I think 9 looked like him! And they were nice pups, I didn't have any complaints about this dog at all. Probably he and that brindle that Joan Linderman brought over - probably the two best imports I ever saw. Now we come down to Tosa Ryu Go.

This was an import that came over, brought over by Annie Powell and this dog had just about everything wrong that you can think about. He was a tall dog, he had a nice big head, but his ears stuck out at the side, they wouldn't stand up real alert like. His front legs, like Tochi Fuji's were right close together and the feet turned out at the bottom, he didn't have a good rear end, he didn't have a good topline, he didn't have a good tail curl, he came over here because Annie had a friend over there. She spent some time being a nurse, she spent some time in Japan with the Army of Occupation. She met this guy over there who was a street car conductor and he's the one that was sending her dogs from time to time. This dog, he had absolutely nothing going for him at all, but he produced a lot of litters and let me tell you about that. The club met over at Annie's place in Long Beach this one Sunday and she had a flock of red puppies, this dog was red, and she had three bitches - he had been bred to all three of these bitches and I couldn't believe my eyes - she had all of these pups in the same pen! And I said, "geez Annie, they look so much alike, how do you keep them apart?" and she said, "what's the difference? He's the father of all of them." Some of the people in the club, you know -1 mean they really tuned up to that, but that's how Annie was you know, you just - she called me up one time and said that her brother was dying in Texas and she had to get rid of a lot of her dogs because she had to fly to Texas to stay with him. So I called a guy I knew, Roger, who was a real estate agent and spent a lot of his time just cruising around in his Cadillac anyhow. So I told him about it and the two of us worked together and in a couple of days we had placed 17 Akitas including the one that Roger took and he went over there unexpectedly one morning and he discovered that the pens were every bit as full as they had been before he started placing all these dogs and come to find out she had them parked all over the neighborhood and just wanted to bring them all home and there wasn't room for them. Didn't have a brother in Texas. <Laughter> But she got us really working for her there, this lady is a real interesting person. To say the least. Anyhow, I think that's the end of the males, I'll go back and go through the thing again with my book, my ACA book and I'll try to add whatever I can.

(...the reason this tape is so late, I started to mail them off to you and I thought I'd better check them out just to be sure that Tape #1 was okay, I put Tape #2 in and there wasn't a sound on that tape. I don't know what happened but I had to do that one all over again, which is why this is so late, but what the heck, I'm 73 and slowing down in every direction, you can't expect miracles kid! <Laughter> Okay, so that's about it for now I'll start in on the females and within a month I'll be able to send it off I'm sure. Okay, bye now!)