I’ve been considering picking up a Wisdom Panel dog genetics test, to find out what Cooper actually is, genetically…
The shelter originally had him listed as “Poodle/Shih-Tzu mix”, but he doesn’t appear to be one
He’s too tall and heavy to be a Shih-poo (35 lbs or so)
His muzzle is shorter than a poodle, longer than a shih
His tail coils up when excited
Very dense musculature, amazingly strong for his size
He has webbed paws (spider-dog…spider-dog does whatever a spider-dog does…)
From our visual research, he looks more Portuguese Water Dog than anything, however…
He’s a tad small for a Portie
He doesn’t particularly care for the water, he’ll swim when the mood takes him, he just won’t seek out the water’ plus, he’s terrified of the garden hose, hides when I’m filling the chicken waterers
So, I’ve been considering Wisdom Panel 2.5, has anyone used this test? How accurate would you say it is, it supposedly goes back 3 generations…
well, it depends. If your dog actually has a purebred parent, it will quite accurately pick that up. However, many people make the big mistake of of thinking that all mutts are descendants of purebred dogs, which is totally incorrect. Most mutts are descendants of mutts and have little to no purebred ancestry.
Most people send in their sample and get a confusing list of “minor influences” which SHOULD be interpreted to mean your dog is a mutt descended from mutts, not that it’s a weird mix of ten different breeds. If it comes back with one breed listed as a majority influence, your dog had one purebred parent. If it comes back with two breeds as a majority influence, your dog is one of those very rare mixes between two pure breeds.
As a fun experiment, I and some friends collected samples from several mixed-breed puppies in rescue that were known to have a purebred mother (the mother was in foster care when she gave birth) and sent the samples to several different dog heritage services. All of them accurately identified the breed of the mother, but there was a lot of variation between services in the lengthy list of “minor influences” on the fathers, indicating that for the most part the fathers were mutts, except for the one dog who was identified by all of the services as a lab-border collie mix.
-wouldn’t pay too much attention to the breed the shelter gave you. There have been studies showing that even experts are hopeless at identifying the breed(s) of mixed-breed dogs by visual observation, and even crosses between the same two breeds can look remarkably different from each other and their parents.
I agree with spamforbrains. The test can only ever be as good as the gene libraries behind it… and working out the genotype of a “breed” (which is a nebulous concept of itself) just isn’t important enough for people to spend research dollars doing so.
All dogs have webbed feet, to some extent, including my basenjis, who won’t go near the water.
um, actually a lot of people have spent a lot of money doing just that. There have been a number of significant scientific studies published in the peer-reviewed literature about breed genotypes and the ancestry of breeds. The genetics of dogs is very interesting to many people, in part due to the amazing plasticity of the species. Studying how and why a breed ended up looking and acting like it did has taught us a lot about development.
So much this! I volunteer at my local municipal shelter and seriously, no one really knows. It’s pretty much all guesses. I would say, over they years, they’re getting better at not calling every single muscular block-headed dog a “pit bull” or ever tiny, short haired, pointy-eared dog a “chihuahua”. They really do try, but it’s really hard to know for sure.
To answer the OP, I know the tests have become far more accurate than they were in the past. About 8 years ago, the founder of our rescue had her UKC registered and papered American Pit Bull Terrier tested just for fun. He came back something like 88% Border Collie, presumable based on his black and white fur/markings. She retested last year and he came back purebred APBT which of course he is. She used the most recent Wisdom Panel. I am hoping to do this testing on my mixed breed dogs to see what it says vs. what the shelter told me. I just haven’t gotten to it yet.
I had it done for my tan-with-black-ears mutt last year. She came back as 50% pitbull, 25% yellow lab and 25% “all mixed up.”
She doesn’t have the square head or ears of a pit but she is the right size and a little chesty. She also is cuddly as heck which I attribute to the pitbull. Her coloring and shedding is in line with yellow labs. I think she is also a good part hound of some sort just with the way she is obsessed with following a scent.
Anyway, I didn’t find it to be unbelievable. But there was not much to believe
I haven’t done the test with my boy dog yet. I want to but he’s such a baby I am afraid to “torture” him with the testing stick in his mouth. Heh
