dog genealogy kit
dog genealogy kit
Canine Genealogy Kit?
I have what I think is a beagle/basset mix that I rescued from a shelter. The paper work said that she was a beagle. However, I had a basset hound that lived to be 14 years old, and when I look at my dog I can see the beagle and basset in her. Anyway, I saw this canine genealogy kit in a magazine and I was wondering if it was worth the money. Has anyone ever tried this? Did it work? Thanks.
I wanted to add that I do love my mutt for what she is. Knowing her breeds would not change that for me.
@King Les-I am not going to show her and I am never breeding her, she’s spayed anyway. I’m just curious.
The accuracy is claimed to be 99% for breeds that are IN the DNA laboratory’s data-base.
Despite what some of your “advisers” think, it is not based on the genes that are characteristic of a breed (it it were, a white or liver or blue pooch could never be identified as a GSD, despite that the Yank, Canadian & British KCs all accept those banned-in-GSDs colours when registering so-called GSDs), it is based on a totally different part of the genome, a part sometimes referred to as “junk DNA”.
I would expect every DNA lab to have both Bassets and Beagles in its data-base, but its web-page ought to list the breeds for you, and also its price (to which you add your vet’s fee if the test is based on a blood sample, not a cheek swab).
If your pet has a pure-bred Basset parent she WILL have the achondroplastic-dwarf legs that Bassets, Corgis & Vallhunds have, as those breeds are genetically homozygous for the dominant allele that produces that type of dwarfism. Without those legs she could still be a cross-bred instead of purely a Beagle, but the features that you think of as “Basset” will have come from some other breed.
If you want to pay for the test, ask your vet which DNA lab he/she uses for breed-identification testing, or look in the Links => DNA part of http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/The_GSD_Source for some suggestions.
But to me it is irrelevant. Those tests do NOT allow a pooch to be registered as a pure-bred for breeding & showing purposes. Knowing which 4 or 5 breeds are in the close ancestry of a pooch is meaningless – what counts are the specific talents & attitudes she HAS inherited, regardless of where they came from and which other characteristics she COULD have – but didn’t – inherit from other ancestors, had random chance during meiosis and then again during fertilisation been a bit different.
And “genealogy” is not the appropriate term.
Genealogy refers to identifying the individual ancestors. To do that for a canine you would first use a parentage test to prove that sire & dam were (or were likely to have been) the actual parents – that requires DNA from both alleged parents plus your pet. If that checks out okay, you then need DNA from all 4 grandparents. If they check out okay, you then need DNA from all 8 greatgrandparents. By which stage you are unlikely to be able to get DNA from each pooch, let alone from each of the 16 great-great-grandparents.
Very few actual breeds have a genealogy shorter than 50 generations….
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
“In GSDs” as of 1967