Oh, silly me. I see now how you came to that conclusion. Yes, they do not have full AKC regognition yet.
They are considered a "rare" breed yet, as people have only recently been importing them from Finland and the U.K.
However, please let me assure you that they are not a "designer" breed. If you do your home work, you will understand more, I think. Here, let me assist:
Here is the Finnish Lapphund Club of Canada:
http://www.finnishlapphund.ca/
If you really think these are a mix, I would strongly encourage you to visit this website.
Oh, what the hay. I can cut and paste, and that way everyone on the board can learn (just in case they are feeling lazy, LOL)
he Finnish Lapphund is one of the three Lapphund breeds descending from the old arctic spitz-type dogs of the Northern Scandinavian area and the Karelian region of Russia. The other two being the Lapponian Herder and the Swedish Lapphund. This is a very old breed believed to be long established as the lean sighthounds of Asia.
It is believed that the Spitz originated from Northern Russia and spread from there further out through Europe to countries such as Germany, where it became ancestor to the breed "Wolf Spitz".
Excavations of the Russian zoologist Antusching in 1882 found settlements of Saami people near Ladoga Lake in the Karelia region of Russia, believed to be of the early Neolithic period. Part of the excavations where skeletons of dogs which showed that two different breeds of dogs existed around the peaty moors of Ladoga Lake. These breeds were the summer dog (Canis Familiaris Palustris) and the winter dog (Canis Familiaris Inostranzewi). Antusching described the winter dog and later found out that they function as house and family dog.
Another evidence of the antiquity of the breed were the 7000 year old skeletal remains of a dog found in the archaelogical diggings in Varanger, Norway that closely resemble today's Lapphunds.
At the time when the dog was still a wild animal and the reindeers ran around in big herds, man had a big problem keeping an eye on their semi-domesticated reindeers without working day and night. At the same time it became more difficult for the dog to find food for the day, so they came to hang around the outskirts of the Saami camp scavenging for scraps that the Saami would throw away. As the relationship between Laplander and the arctic dog grew and with further domestication, the Saami soon found out that the dog could keep the herd together so effectively that no reindeers ran off and got lost, which of course made everything a lot easier for the man.
In the old days the Saami normally needed two different types of dogs that could work the field for him, a winter and a summer kind. The summer dog was an excellent edge dog, who without difficulties could search an area for lost reindeers and gather the scattered herd, while the winter dog was a more enduring dog. He had stronger legs and thicker fur in order to force the herd forward. Of course there were also those that were equally good in summer and winter. Besides this the Lapphund has, during the years, developed into a very nice, faithful and easy to teach friend who suits well as a family dog.
Original use and the spread of the Lapphund
Principal task of Lapphunds was guarding and herding the reindeers together. However, they were as effective in guarding the dwellings of the Saami and were also used as sleddogs. They accompany the Saami on their long travels in the summer and in the wintertime were used for hunting bears, mooses, wolves, foxes, rabbits, squirrels and birds. Hunting was a great secondary source of income for the nomadic Saami, as animal fur commanded a good price.
Being a nomadic people, settlements of the Saami were quite isolated from one another, so contact with various settlements were limited. As a consequence of this isolation, they could not avoid mating in close relationships and in-breeding of their Lapphunds. This explains why between different populations of the Saami , dogs differed in size, colour and quality of the coat.
In the western part of Scandinavia long haired black or brown Lapphunds predominated, while in the eastern part Lapphunds were parti-coloured of long-haired and short-haired type. Short-haired Lapphunds were better suited to eastern climate than his long-haired cousin, because in wintertime snow don't accumulate in their coat.
Because working abilities of Lapphunds were for the Saami people more important than their appearance, they were not afraid of crossing in other breeds. The Lapphund is an example of interbreeding between the northern Spitz type dogs and herding dogs from further south in Europe. It was noted that the Collie could have figured in the Lapphund's makeup.
Life of Saami people drastically changed in the 20th century. Numerous Saami settled down in permanent homes. The use of dogs for reindeer herding was getting less and less popular and the Saami have increasingly been using snowmobiles and in some degree helicopters in herding. However, as years passed by, the losses of reindeers were considerably greater than they were before. Reindeers were afraid of helicopters and snowmobiles and many died from heart-attacks and fright caused a lot of animals to fall and break their necks or legs. Because of this, lately, there is a growing trend among Saami people in returning back to the old methods of reindeer management.
Two World Wars and the following distemper epidemic had dealt a devastating effect on the Lapphund population and contributed to the diminishing numbers of Lapphunds in Northern Scandinavia. Howerver, as the use of the indigenous dog breed for work declined among the Saami, interest on the breed was growing from the rest of Scandinavia. Both the Swedes and the Finns claimed the Saami reindeer-herding dog as their own. To avoid problems, two breeds were internationally recognized - the Swedish Lapphund and the Finnish Lapphund.
After the World War II, the first Finnish breed standard was accepted in 1945 as part of the effort to recognize and revitalize the number of the Saami Herding Dogs.
The breed was first called "Lapponian shepherd", but in 1960's with the unification of the various Finnish Kennel organizations and with all the different lapphund dogs that were registered in the various kennel organizations were accepted into the unified Finnish Kennel Club, problems had arisen. Breeders came to realized that some of the lines had become shorter coated and while others are definitely long-coated. The breed was reassessed in 1966-1967 and the dogs were eventually separated on the basis of their coat length, the short coated Lapponian Herder and the long coated dogs which later on identified as the Finnish Lapphund.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Marri Vainio of the Peski Kennel had made use of her good knowledge of the breed and took on the task of identifying individual dogs in the Laplands and made a significant contributions in breeding and stabilizing the "type" of the Lappland herder. A number of the early Lapphunds that were exported outside of Scandinavia were offsprings of the original Peski Kennel dogs brought down from the Lapplands.
The standard was further revised 1975 and again in 1993. Since 1993, the official name of the breed has also been changed from Lapinkoira to Suomenlapinkoira (Finnish Lapphund). In Finland, the breed registry is still open, allowing unregistered dogs to be admitted if they meet the breed standard.
The popularity of Finnish Lapphund kept increasing throughout the 1990's and the first years of the 21st century. In 2004, the breed was among the five most popular breeds in Finland, and it is steadily gaining ground all over the world.
(This is taken from the Finnish Lapphund Club of Canada).