Two people have sent me this page that shows supposed genetic make-up of shelter dogs and compares them with guesses about their parentage.
These tests are CRAP. They look at only a small number of genetic markers, and the samples they are using to determine which genetic markers are indicative of a particular breed are small. It actually makes a huge difference if the diagnostic markers are based upon a very small sample size and the breed happens to be quite genetically diverse and large in number.
Some of these breeds supposedly are derived from rare breeds like the Beaucerons, Nova Scotia duck-tolling retrievers, Irish water spaniels, Cane Corso, and Lancashire heelers (a breed that really doesn’t exist in North America outside of a very small number of kennels). The ubiquity of rare breeds in this analysis should be a major red flag. Rare breeds aren’t out roaming the streets mating with bitches in backyards. Rare breeds are usually very much under lock and key, and because they are by definition rare, they wouldn’t turn up that often, even if they were.
But # 94 settles it for me.
Click to make larger.
This is a smooth-coated dog.
But you cannot get a smooth coated dog by crossing a golden retriever with a poodle, a Dandie Dinmont, or a Glen of Imaal terrier (which are rare dogs). If you cross a golden retriever with any dogs of a coat like those dogs, you’ll get a bearded, Benji-type dog.
Further, Dandies and Glens are dwarfs. That particular form of dwarfism is inherited via a dominant allele. If 40 percent of this dog’s make-up is derived from two dwarf breeds, it will likely be a dwarf.
It’s obviously not one!
The only way it could not be a dwarf is if it were bred from two crosses between one of the dwarf component breeds.
My guess is this dog is a mixture of golden retriever and feist. Golden retrievers and poodles are very common breeds. It’s very likely that the samples that were used to determine golden retriever and poodle genetic markers didn’t include enough of the dogs from a variety of bloodlines to divine the diagnostic genetic markers for those breeds.
And most people, even in the United States, don’t know what a feist is. It might as well be a mongrel terrier, but feists would be related to the terriers of England and Ireland.
Which is probably why this dog comes out as being so similar to two terriers that are extremely rare in the US.
Feists are much, much more common than Dandie Dinmonts and Glen of Imaals, but because they aren’t really standardized, they don’t appear in these genetic tests at all.
So whatever company did these tests looked at bunch of rare breeds that are unlikely to be involved in crosses, yet it ignored all the feist and cur strains that are quite common in some parts of the country. And from the looks of many of these crosses, these breeds are very likely to have contributed some genes to some of these animals that supposedly have rare breed in them!
So these genetic marker tests aren’t worth it.
Do not trust them.
Many of these crosses are impossible if one actually understands the inheritance of coat type and certain conformation traits, such as dwarfism and ear carriage.
In order to make one of these tests accurate, a large number of genetic markers would have to be used, and the diagnostic markers for each breed would have to be determined from a good representative sample of that breed– especially if the breed happened to be quite common and relatively genetically diverse.
These tests are not based upon either of those criteria.
So they really aren’t accurate at all.
I just wish those tests weren’t so expensive because I’d love to see what ridiculous things they’d toss out for my dog.
They wouldn’t be quite so bad if they had someone knowledgeable in dog genetics (such as yourself) to vet their findings before foisting them off on the owners.
A related be of ignorance is that rescues and pounds are now often constrained to describing their adoptees as whatever breed they “appear” to most resemble. Thus a lot of Boxer crosses, French Bull crosses, etc, are being listed as “Pit Bulls”. In MD the owner of a dog considered to be a “Pit Bull” (God, I hate that term) cannot easily find a home to rent because if said “Pit Bull’ bites someone , the landlord is as liable for damages as is the owner of the dog.
Can you imagine what an Alaskan Noble Companion Dog would be described as?
Often, shelter people don’t care or even want to be accurate about what breed or mix went into an animal – cats as well as dogs. They have a battered old breed encyclopedia on their desk and the internet at their fingertips, and they will nominate the most unusual breed they can find in hopes that the novelty will make the animal more adoptable. Many of the shelter people I have known do this quite deliberately. Their justification is that if the new owner thinks their new pet is “something rare”, they will value it more and take better care of it. They think that that presumed end justifies their means.
I could not begin to count the times I’ve seen “Russian Blues”, “Korats”, “Bombays”, etc., in shelters, even in small towns in KY and WV. What is the likelihood of even ONE purebred cat (other than a Persian or Himalayan) in a small-town shelter? (A) Slim. (B) None.
Same with dogs, but some of the dog “breeds” I’ve seen in shelters were even more off-the-wall. I’ve seen “purebred California Short-Haired Poodles” and Pom mixes labeled as purebred Papillons, pit-bull mixes labeled as Boxer mixes – the list goes on and on.
Their intentions may be good, but it’s still bullshit. A prospective adopter should be given information that is as accurate as possible. There’s nothing wrong with saying that an adorable black-and-white poodle mix looks like Bo Obama. But to tell a prospective adopter that since it looks like Bo Obama, it must be a Portuguese Water Dog, is dishonest and misleading. A prospective new owner needs to know what specific behaviors their new dog may potentially have.
They should educate people to appreciate their new pet on its own merits, and not because it’s a (name the exotic breed or mix). But if they are going to speculate as to what breed or mix the animal is, they should be honest about it. There’s nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know what breed he is, but he looks like he could be part (whatever)”.
To me that dog screams Rhodesian Ridgeback mix.
Thanks for your opinion. They don’t even test my rare breed unless you buy the professional version from a vet.
We offer a DNA blood test at the vet where I work. We don’t do a whole lot of them since they are kind of pricey for something that is “just for fun” but out of the ones we have done, most of the results have been really good. I can think of one or two that came back with some really rare breed that seemed unlikely. The clients have been happy with their results as well.
The test that we offer says itself that it does not identify “pit bulls” well since it’s a very genetically diverse group of dogs under one label, and that a pit-type mix may test as any of the bulldogs or terriers.
Just commenting on the dwarfism issue – one our clients has a dog that was born from a female dachshund but the father is unknown – and this dog stands knee high and is quite leggy in build. If we ran a DNA test on this dog without knowing what his mother was and it came back 50% dachshund, I’m sure many would doubt the validity!
Dachshunds can carry longer legs. It’s not very common, especially in English speaking countries, but those in Germany are pretty long-lagged.
In Jack Russells, if you breed a long-legged one to a short-legged one, all the puppies will have short legs. But if you breed short-legged ones to short-legged ones that carry long legs, you can get a short-legged one. It’s a simple dominant and recessive inheritance. Both dachshunds and JRT’s are achondroplastic dwarfs.
There is also the possibility that this dachshund was a carrier for the long-legged allele. There has been a lot of crossbreeding between dachshunds and miniature pinschers, and there have been cases of people forging the papers on the dogs.
So maybe it came in that way.
I can’t say anything about about the test that was performed on the dog in your post, but if it was our test that came back with those results I would interpret it as goldendoodle x pit mix – based on the information provided by the company on the difficulty with testing pit bull-type dogs.
Feists are more common than pit bulls here.
Feists are actually more common than Jack Russells, especially when you classify rat terriers as feists.
Leg length in a dwarf/normal cross and even a backcross can vary a lot. As a dominant, dwarfism’s inheritance is simple. Expression, not so much.
http://archive.org/stream/geneticendocrini00stoc#page/73
JRT’s are NOTHING like that. They are all either short-legged or long-legged.
The link Jess provides is to the work by Stockard, et al, circa 1941– one of the most important studies published on canine morphology. The photographs alone, showing crosses/backcrosses of various body types are fascinating. Also interesting to note the differences between the bassets, dachshunds, cockers, etc of then, and of now, 70 years later.
I’m just curious and would love to get some feed back on the heredity of short legs in my dog.
I have a mixed breed spaniel with short legs, and a sibling of hers had short legs as well, two had long and one other had medium – very much like most Cockers in build. I know her parents and grandparents and their breeds. She is a mix of Tibetan Spaniel, Papillon, Cocker and Cavalier . . . but mostly Tibetan Spaniel as those breeds above are not evenly behind her. Her parents were long legged (like a Papillon) and medium. Her long legged parent was the product of a Papillon and a short legged Tibetan Spaniel/Cavalier (possibly Cockalier) mix.
I can provide photos if you’d like but the manner of heredity here is not following the ‘short legged dominant’ pattern that I keep reading about.
Kary
There are other types of dwarfism that can be recessive, but the most common one is dominant. I’m not familiar with Tibetan spaniels, so I really don’t know.
Thank you. I didn’t realise there were recessive forms of dwarfism (in dogs) as well. It looks like I have an evenings read from that link Jess posted.
Kary
Most forms of recessive dwarfism in dogs have a detrimental effect. The dog suffers from other complications as well.
What type of complications? These shorter leg dogs have straight legs – just shorter in length. These are not Dashchund short . . . but similar to the Australian Terrier or Lancashire Heeler in porportion. Like these guys – http://www.22dog.com/breeds/Lancashire-Heeler.html – http://www.22dog.com/breeds/Australian-Terrier.html
Kary
I think Jess is right in this analysis.
She probably is as I follow what she says often . . . but I’m not understanding the analysis . . . yet anyway. I understand that recessive dwarfism is dogs can have detrimental effects. Are shorter legs like this dwarfism or simply shorter legs, the same way I have a 32″ inseam and my friend, who is the same height, has a 28″ inseam. Honest questions here. I’m attempting to figure this out.
Kary
What Jess is saying is that some dogs may be dwarfs, but they don’t look like it. Maybe that’s what we have here.
Yes, that is what I meant by expression. We think of dwarf dogs as having very short, abnormal looking legs but once you get to mixing things around and the expression of the gene is affected, you may get something that looks quite normal, just short, and may be indistinguishable from a dog lacking the dwarf gene. There would not be a way to definitely tell unless there was a test for the gene.
It is also confusing to even say ‘dwarf gene’ when what the gene does is affect expression of various factors that influence growth, maturation, etc.
too bad the company uses such bad algorithms and so little data. I’d think throwing on a probability factor (common breeds more likely) into the decision matrix would vastly improve the predictions. Meanwhile, what’s wrong with ‘mutt’ or Heinz 57. Much more honest than some misplaced precision conclusion based on inadequate sample sizes. Sure hope someone will come out with a better product and put the present high-tech snake-oil in the bin, where it belongs.
retrieverman, are there any DNA testing companies that are reliable? For human or for dogs?
The problem is that they don’t understand everything they ‘know’. The ground rules for making estimates keep changing as they learn more.
For that purpose, I wouldn’t use them.
However, DNA tests for other things are pretty good.
Like what?
Like those that look at genetic disorders or do paternity tests.
Dog breeds are not a clearly defined by their DNA as those things are.
It seems never to be considered that such a dog might well have NO purebreds in a dozen generations, but rather simply be the product of indiscriminate breeding for quite a while. Such “mixtures” could carry any number of genes common to various breeds,thus making identification of purported component breeds questionable at the very least.
Yeah. People are assuming that you’re only going to get a limited number of crosses.
When we sell the DNA test, we tell people that the test only goes back as far as three generations and beyond that you don’t get results, or at least not with any confidence (per the company). A dog with no purebred ancestors within that realm wouldn’t come back with anything. When I did my dog he came back with 25% of one breed, 25% of another and 50% “mixed” – which made sense to me considering where he came from and what he looks like.
So, what you’re saying is, I should be suspect of the results that my Oliver isn’t a Lab/Rottweiler/Yorkie – Dachshund/Japanese Chin/Boxer/Toy Poodle? The first set were the result of a cheek swab test and the second set were the result of a blood test. I still think he looks like he has Rhodesian Ridgeback or Redbone Coonhound in him… At least both tests gave me a good laugh. Expensive laughs, but good ones!
http://rescuek9.blogspot.com/2010/11/dna-mystery-continues.html
I bet redbone coonhound isn’t even a breed they could test for.
A lot of the native North American breeds aren’t AKC or haven’t been AKC for very long, so they get ignored.
Must be a Lancashire heeler mix!
theres no way these stuff are accurate…
sadly, i think some of the “cladistic” studies of breeds aren’t any better. Almost all of them have single line connections whereas the reality is that most breeds are “mix/match” that then were formalized with a “closed” studbook. (I use “closed” because there have always been cases where the presumptive sire is not the real sire and where a breeder used a different dog than the official one — as evidenced with the silken windhound/ longhair whippet where it was asserted that the long coat came from a recessive within whippets whereas the DNA tests indicate it came from Shetland sheepdogs). I realize that it’s much cleaner to show one line connections, but that isn’t the reality.
this makes sense. I think the Wisdom Panel (the most popular DNA breed test) has gotten better in the past few years, (I’ve seen more reasonable results from recent tests than from the first-gen ones) but it’s still far from the whole story. My dog looks like an oversize Kai Ken, a very leggy smooth-coat Chow-Chow, or an Australian Kelpie with a curled tail and straight stifles (take your pick)- here’s what he looks like- http://www.dogster.com/dogs/1116633/photos/1
The Wisdom Panel results were totally not what anyone was expecting- Chihuahua 50%, Shar Pei 25%, Scottish Deerhound 25%. The Shar Pei I can totally see (take off that wrinkly jacket, you have his exact structure, and they are common enough in his hometown) and the Chi, maybe, since Chi crosses can be much larger than their parent… but the Deerhound, no way in hell. Never. Extremely rare breed, which he has ZERO phenotypic resemblance to.
Two years later, I learned that I could have them re-run his test results with their new computer algorithm, and did that. What did it change? Not much. They are still adamant he has a Deerhound grandparent. Only thing different, they reduced the Chi to 25% also, and added one “mixed breed” grandparent. So now supposedly one parent was a Chi mix, and the other a Shar Pei/Deerhound F1 cross. No effin way.
I think it’s better than throwing darts at a board, or opening a breed book at random, but they certainly don’t have the full story yet.
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