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Chinook — BetterBred Breed Page – BetterBred.com
BetterBred Breed Profile

Chinook

Temperament: Affectionate, playful, and easy to train. Chinooks are friendly and reliable off-lead, though some can be shy. They are family dogs who crave company and do not do well left alone for long. Energetic and thrive with exercise and training, but they are not watchdogs.
Height: Males: 24-26 inches (61-66 cm), Females: 22-24 inches (56-61 cm)
Weight: 55-90 pounds (25-41 kg)
Life Span: 12-15 years
Outlier Index ?
0.34
Born before 2016: 0.41 Born after 2024: —
Avg Genetic Rel. ?
0.08
Born before 2016: 0.07 Born after 2024: —
Internal Relatedness ?
-0.07
Born before 2016: -0.19 Born after 2024: —
#NameGender OIAGRIR
1 Baikal M 0.29 0.16 -0.17
2 Forever Greene Savik M 0.28 0.17 -0.26
3 Forever Greene Tenakee F 0.34 0.23 -0.28
4 Pacific Skye Order of the Phoenix F 0.32 0.05 0.10
5 GRCH Forever Greene Nahla CGC TKN BN CD RE F 0.29 0.05 0.14
6 Intervale Etched in Stone M 0.42 0.02 0.06
7 Ferncroft Bluebird Day M 0.28 0.10 -0.05
8 Granite Hill Shadow Dancer M 0.26 -0.01 0.00
9 Ferncroft Home Grown Eden F 0.32 0.09 0.00
10 Intervale Tuckerman CHIC M 0.34 0.07 -0.09
The Chinook was developed in New Hampshire in the early 1900s by Arthur Treadwell Walden, a sled dog driver who wanted an American all-purpose sled dog combining power, endurance, and a gentle nature. Every modern Chinook traces back to one dog - Chinook himself, born in 1917, whose sire was a tawny farm dog and whose dam was a Husky descended from Admiral Peary's lead sled dog. Walden also bred Chinook to German Shepherd and other working types. After Walden left for Antarctica in 1927, the breed passed through a series of small kennels and came extremely close to extinction. In 1965 the Guinness Book of World Records named the Chinook the rarest dog breed, with only 125 alive. By 1981 there were only 11 Chinooks left that could be used for breeding. The breed has been rebuilt since then, including through formal crossbreeding programs - first under UKC in the 1980s and 1990s, and again starting in 2017 through the Chinook Owners' Association's Breed Conservation Program, which has brought in controlled crosses to Tamaskan, Bernese Mountain Dog, Labrador Retriever, and Seppala Siberian lines. The AKC fully recognized the breed in 2013, and Chinook is the State Dog of New Hampshire.
Reported issues include hip dysplasia, cryptorchidism, epilepsy/seizures (including an unusual movement disorder known as "Chinook seizures"), cataracts, dwarfism/chondrodysplasia, MDR1 drug sensitivity, gastrointestinal problems, and allergies. No strong cancer trends have been identified, though hemangiosarcoma has been reported. DNA tests are available for MDR1 and chondrodysplasia.
VGL has reported Chinooks carrying an average of around 3.76 alleles across the 33 STR loci, with an effective allele count near 2.20. Both numbers are among the lowest on record for any breed. There is not a lot of genetic variety to redistribute, but what does exist is being spread reasonably well. Protecting rare alleles - and introducing new ones through the crossbreeding program - matters more in this breed than in almost any other. Chinooks came through one of the tightest bottlenecks of any modern breed - down to 11 breeding dogs in 1981. Given that starting point, VGL testing has found breeders have done a good job of pairing the least related dogs they can find, and the breed-wide inbreeding coefficient comes in around zero. The catch is that the pool being drawn from is small to begin with. Individual IR scores range widely, and the planned crossbreedings under the Breed Conservation Program are a direct response to the limits of what can be done inside the closed studbook alone.

Average metrics by birth year for dogs with recorded birthdates in the BetterBred database.

A 3D genetic map of enrolled Chinook dogs in the BetterBred database, based on allele-sharing distance across 33 STR loci. This is not a complete picture of the breed — it reflects only dogs whose owners have enrolled them. Drag to rotate · scroll to zoom · hover for dog names (public profiles only).

Historical founders — oldest 25% of enrolled dogs     Current gene pool — most recent 50% of enrolled dogs
Building plot… this may take a minute for larger breeds.

The Dog Leukocyte Antigen (DLA) region controls immune function and is the most polymorphic portion of the canine genome. Every dog carries two sets of DLA haplotypes — one from each parent — which almost never recombine across generations. Frequency percentages reflect how often each haplotype appears across all allele copies in the breed, not the percentage of dogs carrying it.

Class I Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
1160
36.4%
1045
27.3%
1012
18.2%
1291
13.6%
1068
4.6%

Class II Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
2024
36.4%
2003
18.2%
2012
18.2%
2072
13.6%
2028
9.1%
2053
4.6%

Class I & II Combinations

Class IClass IIFrequency
1160 2024
36.4%
1012 2003
18.2%
1045 2012
18.2%
1291 2072
13.6%
1045 2028
9.1%
1068 2053
4.6%

The Canine Diversity Test from UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory is the foundation of BetterBred’s breed management tools. Testing your dog adds to the breed database and gives you access to the full suite of breeding analysis tools.

Order from UC Davis VGL →
OI
Outlier Index

The Outlier Index (OI) measures how unusual a dog’s allele combination is relative to the tested population of its breed. A higher OI means the dog carries alleles at lower frequencies across the breed — genetic variants that are underrepresented in the population as a whole.

Dogs with high OI are genetically valuable because they carry diversity that most other tested dogs don’t share. Breeding them thoughtfully into the broader population helps redistribute lower-frequency alleles rather than allowing them to become even rarer over generations.

The breed average shown here reflects all dogs tested in the BetterBred database. The senior and youngster comparisons show whether diversity is trending up or down in recent generations.
AGR
Average Genetic Relatedness

Average Genetic Relatedness (AGR) measures how similar a dog’s DNA is, on average, to every other tested dog in the breed. It reflects the dog’s mean kinship — how closely related it is to the population as a whole.

A lower AGR means the dog is more genetically distinct from the majority of the breed. Dogs with low AGR carry alleles at lower frequencies across the tested population, making them higher-priority candidates for inclusion in a well-managed breeding program.

AGR is conceptually related to mean kinship used in conservation genetics for managed species populations. A declining AGR average in younger dogs suggests the breed is successfully redistributing genetic diversity across generations.
IR
Internal Relatedness

Internal Relatedness (IR) measures how much identical genetic material an individual dog inherited from both parents. IR is a useful indicator of inbreeding: lower IR generally reflects lower inbreeding, and it is widely used and reported in the scientific literature.

A high IR is not the cause for alarm it might appear. Elevated IR can often be resolved in a single generation by pairing with a dog whose ancestry is less represented in the breed. It is a signpost, not a sentence.

BetterBred reports IR for reference, but it is not our primary breeding guidance tool. OI and AGR together give a more complete and actionable picture of a dog’s genetic value to the population.

AGR tells you which dogs are genetically unusual relative to the population. OI tells you which dogs are most valuable to preserve. OI specifically weights mid-frequency alleles, identifying dogs whose ancestry is underrepresented in a way most likely to benefit the breed.