Samoyed dog

The name comes from the Samoyedic peoples of north-western Siberia, notably the Nenets, who used white spitz dogs to herd reindeer and pull sledges. Ernest Kilburn-Scott brought the type to Britain in 1889, and the Western breed grew from a small number of imported dogs. Even so, genetics backs the older ancestry: the Samoyed sits in the ancient group of the 2004 survey and among the divergent breeds in the 2010 one.