Dog Breed DNA identification- anyone had experience with this?

[Perry]

My brother recently rescued an abandoned puppy. They are now thinking it might be an Anatolian Shepherd. Someone suggested they use a DNA test kit to figure out what it is. Anatolian Shepherd isn't on the list, so it probably wouldn't be useful for their purposes, but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with these kits.

[Kebo]

We had one of our dogs tested using the Wisdom Panel. We guessed her to be a golden retriever/poodle plus something else -- sheltie and terrier were tops on our guesses. She's totally strawberry blond with loose curls and a lean build.

 

She came back as primarily rottweiler and english setter. See what you think -- she in my avatar :-)

Edited May 18, 2010 by Kebo
typo

[Lolly]

My sil did. They came up with quite a long list for her pooch.

[hornblower]

I think they are largely dog doo-doo. Fun if you have a few extra bucks you want to waste but the results I've seen on dogs are just plain silly.

 

Note too that they won't test purebred dogs, which is the big red flag & if you do send in swabs for a pb dog (which people have tried several times that I've read) you get completely wrong results.

 

Terrierman did a good blogpost on this last year

http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-accurate-are-dog-breed-dna-tests.html

 

& esp in the comments. There are some good reasons for this & that is that 1) we don't have anywhere near enough of a genetic map of breeds & 2) many breed characteristics are actually not actually linked to a specific gene.

[TravelingChris]

oh, if they won;t do purebreed dogs that I agree with the above poster that it is on very shaky grounds. I have adopted a poodle and a number of years ago, a maybe poodle, maybe poodle mix. My poodle that I have now looks exactly like a poodle but since it came from a breed rescue that got him from a shelter where they had found him wandering, who really knows? He is neutered and had been at an early age but what if he wasn't I wanted to breed him? Maybe I would want to verify he is a pb poodle. (Now I wouldn;t do this since I would a) not breed b) definitely not breed without papers c) especially not breed without papers and identified buyers or recipients for any puppies). But sometimes vets even would like to know breeds because of breed specific conditions. I think that they won't verify PB breeds is a giant red flag.

[Perry]

Thanks. I was hoping you'd chime in.

I think they are largely dog doo-doo.

 

I sort of figured this was the case, although theoretically it should be possible, so I was hoping it would be useful to them. Guess they'll just have to wait and see.