Tol Istari Alaskan Malamutes
John & Helen Schultz
Spring Green WI
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Members, AMCA, TSAMC, AMCW
last updated 5/2017
Welcome to Tol Istari

This story begins with a dog in 1974 and ends when our ashes are mixed with
those of our dogs and spread along a snowy wooded trail.  

They say the average person stays in dogs for 5 years.  How sad for them.  What
a wealth of friendships and experiences we would have missed if we had not been
insane enough to have been caught up in all the many ways to enjoy our
challenging breed.  

After surviving our first dog, Gandalf, it is hard to believe we continued to get
more deeply involved but we live the advice we have passed on to many others --
"Nobody has just one."  Some malamute people have come back to us in later
years and told us that with that warning phrase "IT" is officially "all our fault".  

One dog (Gandalf) led to another (Avalanche) which led to a dogsled.  They
hauled wood to heat our home and hauled us down snow bound roads.  We had
some success at weight pulling, showing, and bred our next generations to
increase the team with a goal towards keeping the work ethic we had found in
our original dogs.  Two dogs led to seven, which led to ten.  Ten seemed the magic
number after which came, "What's one more?" and I don't believe we've seen less
than 20 since.  
For a time, John ran mid distance and freight races with mixed teams of
Malamutes and Alaskans or sometimes all Alaskans and we were at well over 30
dogs but now we have come back to our roots and have only Alaskan Malamutes.