For many decades, dog fanciers of all breeds relied on the site PawVillage to store pedigree information. According to its owner, PawVillage was established in 1997. Although it was simple, PawVillage was beloved by the fancy because it was easy and free to use. The open source format allowed the public to contribute pedigree information and build nearly 700,000 pedigrees. Its one flaw was that it was run by a single breeder who did not offer a lot of transparency and did not provide access to the data people had willingly donated to the site. In December of 2020, the site suddenly went down. Shortly afterward, the owner provided a statement that it was too costly and time-consuming to manage the site and that she had made the difficult decision to retire it. She claimed that she was exploring options for its future, but as of today, the website is no longer in existence. Many fanciers reached out to recover its data, at least for their individual breed, but to our knowledge, they have never heard back.

Dan and I also reached out, hoping to gain access to the PawVillage Siberian pedigrees, but we never heard back either. After several months passed and the Siberian fancy collectively mourned the loss of PawVillage, we decided that we would like to create a Siberian only pedigree database in collaboration with the Siberian Husky Club Of America, to ensure that something like this never happened again. Thankfully, certain individuals such as Sandy Hudspeth had saved some of the PawVillage Siberian pedigrees. Additionally, the internationally used Ingrus had copied many PawVillage Siberian pedigrees. Pedigreeonline had quite a few Siberian pedigrees as well. By importing pedigrees from all these sources, we were able to recover a significant number of pedigrees in our database. In 2022, the Igloo was born. A big thank you to Sandy and all others who helped us save and recover pedigrees.

Moving forward, though, we will have to rely on the contribution of the Siberian fancy to recover additional lost pedigrees, make corrections to existing pedigrees, and add new pedigrees to the database. Unlike PawVillage, where anybody was able to make changes, and Pedigreeonline, where one can easily delete others' pedigrees, the goal of the Igloo is to provide a small degree of oversight to ensure that the pedigrees remain correct and intact. The Igloo will remain fully transparent and accessible, and an Excel file with all current pedigrees may be downloaded at any time by anyone. This file will be continuously backed up offline as well, so it is safe from online hackers. In the event that Dan and I can no longer manage the Igloo, the SHCA has full access to the backend of the Igloo as well, so the site itself can never be lost. We intend to donate our time and experience to monitor and better the Igloo for as long as we are living and breathing.

To protect our database, users must make edits and additions under their real names. Every change must have administrative approval. All approval requests will be reviewed within 24 hours. There may be an additional delay if dozens of requests are made at the same time -- thank you for your patience. If a user is making a change to dogs that they have owned or bred, these changes will be automatically approved, unless something looks to be in error. If a user is attempting to make a change to a dog owned or bred by someone else, the user may be asked to provide paper copies of pedigrees as proof. If there are any questions about the Igloo or its policies, please email us at admin@siberianigloo.com. Please keep in mind that we are human beings with full-time jobs who are managing this site for free, so please be cordial in your communication with us and patient with us if we are not able to respond right away.

Lastly, we commit to making The Igloo a fair experience for all and will not be giving preference to requests from certain individuals over others. We are not the AKC, and we assume that all information given regarding one's own dog is correct. We are not arbiters of disputes between owners of dogs. Since pedigrees are public information, as in anyone can go to the AKC and purchase any dog's pedigree, we will not honor user requests to take down pedigrees, even when the dog belongs to the user. We believe that fanciers have a right to their dog's pedigree and to display it publicly as they wish. If you have a specific reason why you don't want a dog's pedigree displayed, such as an accidental breeding, and the dog is in no other dogs' pedigree, contact us and we will take it down.

We are always open to suggestions to improve the experience here at the Igloo, so feel free to reach out anytime. We try our best to respond to all correspondence in a timely manner.

Sincerely,

Dan DeWoskin and Rebecca Cao

admin@siberianigloo.com