Who’s Your Daddy?
The cross breed heritage mystery appears to have been solved… at least for some.
DNA testing now commercially available to the general public in the US can reveal your cross breed dogs ancestry. The Wisdom Panel Insights™ product claims to be able to accurately identify over 170 different breeds – and for $80 you can post them two swabs from your mixed dogs cheeck and they’ll email you the results approximately three weeks later.
You can apparently expect to get the results broken down something like:
Significant breed = X (at least 50% of your dog’s DNA is from that particular breed)
Intermediate breed = Y (at least 25% of your dog’s DNA is from that particular breed)
Minor breed = Z (at least 12.5% of your dog’s DNA is from that particular breed).
We would love to know the Menaces history and her breed composition is a significant part of that. Unfortunately I can think of three very good reasons why the test is unlikely to be successful in her case:
- The Menace is an African dog (including the possibility of some “Africanis” heritage somewhere in her background – I sincerely doubt these guys have tested an Africanis).
- Even ignoring the possibility of Africanis in the DNA mix – the variations in more common breed signatures across geographic locations may invalidate the results.
- Most significantly – you need to “firmly rub two swabs around the inside of your dogs cheek for approximately 30 seconds”… I reckon the blood from my severed corotid artery might also invalidate those results then!
We may still give this a try anyway but at time of writing we have not tested this product ourselves.
For those in the US or interested in reading more here is a link to the Wisdom Panel Insights™ site.
Let me know your thoughts if you’ve tried this…
I work at a large vet clinic and we get this question all the time. Having done over 100 dogs using these tests I would check out DNA Diagnostics Center. http://www.vetdnacenter.com We have found them to be very accurate and reasonably priced at $60…and they just need a cheek swab sample so you can collect the sample yourself at home.
Thanks for the comment. I had a look at the DDC web site. The breed DNA test (which seems to be the closest to the “Wisdom Panel Insights” one I commented on in this post) looks like it is on special at $68 to the public – not sure if you get a discount through the clinic? It also only claims to ID about 60 breeds – which is probably more than enough – but anyone suspecting something unusual in their mutts make up might want to check with them first. Having said all that – DDC do look like they are the name in DNA testing in the US.