Your pooches look pretty different from the standard malamutes I’ve seen elsewhere. Is it just because they’re purpose bred rather than show bred?
It's hard to give a full answer on this without knowing what a typical malamute looks like to you but the answer is both yes and no.
My dogs are all pet-quality dogs given to me on non-breeding contracts. Nobody is really saying that my dogs are perfect examples of the breed, my breeder included!
But, many show bred Alaskan Malamutes (and pet bred for that matter) are reaching a point of over exaggeration and rough hewn-ness that is rewarded in the show ring but not true to the breed standard itself AND show rings for malamutes are very biased against dogs that are not seal & white or gray & white. This causes a majority of malamutes seen by the public to be either of those two most common colors, but a wide range of colors is accepted as within standard, including the rarer ones my dogs happen to have (black & tan aka black agouti, white). If my dogs were a more common color they'd look more 'typical' look imo.
Slash's dad Nordiclight’s Syd the Warrior WTD WTDA ROMWD
A bunch of my breeder's dogs in harness showing a variety of colors/patterns:
Long and short of it is that malamutes are not supposed to look how many modern show dogs look today. Part of the reason the breed has slowly morphed over time is because the Alaskan Malamute Club of America (AMCA) and many other country specific malamute breed clubs do NOT put a focus on true to purpose work, they put a focus on ring titles, although we do have working titles we can get. However, in the Swedish Alaskan Malamute Club for example, they have a much stronger focus on working dogs in harness, breed specific working tests etc. Because of this focus more Alaskan Malamutes work in harness in northern Europe than in the Americas. My breeder has imported lots of dogs from these breeders and sent dogs to Europe in exchange and as a result I think my dogs are a lot closer morphological to working bred malamutes in Europe than they are to show bred dogs in the US.
Some. Nice. Working. European. Malamute. Teams. (all instagram links).
HERE are some heads that were considered correct by the AMCA in the mid century. HERE is a (imo) very roughly over-wrought CH show dog from the US today (post also has comparisons to illustrated breed standard and historical heads).
Secondly the Alaskan Malamute breed has had several points of open studbooks and these different lines which make up the breed today all have a different look. My dogs ancestry is majority Kotzebue strain dogs and this look is reflected in their physical look. (My breeder also prefers dogs that look closer to the original standard so she chooses to breed more moderate dogs than what is preferred in the ring, although there are quite a few dogs she's bred that have been championed in conformation).
You can find one of my past discussions on the different strains HERE.
Below: Some of the first ever registered Alaskan Malamutes (If you take away the coat pattern I see a lot of my dogs in them imo).
Another Kotzebue strain dog, CH Toro of Bras Coupe, again I see a lot of my dogs structurally and facially here, he's just a more typical color:
Below: Rowdy of Nome, the antarctic sled dog (a Labrador Husky) that was considered the blue print for the standard:
