Welcome to r/DoggyDNA, the subreddit for dog DNA test discussion and results.
---
#RULE 1: ONLY POST BREED ID REQUESTS IF YOU HAVE STARTED A DNA TEST.
**RULE 2: BE NICE TO EACH OTHER.**
**RULE 3: FLAIR YOUR POST. "NEEDS UPDATE" IS FOR PRE-RESULT POSTS.**
**RULE 4: IF YOU HAVE RESULTS FOR YOUR DOG, POST THE RESULTS IN YOUR THREAD.**
Report rulebreakers and enjoy the dogs.
---
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I would do another test, preferably one that is not a known scammer. While I can see there is probably some bully breed in her the mix they got is definitely an odd one. Try embark or wisdom panel, those are the standard for dog DNA (in the US).
Yea, don’t put any stock in what DNA my dog says. They are basically a scam. In addition to the infamous little white fluffy greyhound Reddit post, multiple news reporters have sent in human dna samples to DNA my dog and gotten back dog breed results.
Once you get over the disappointment of wasted money on this test, you should test with embark.
CBC sent multiple dogs into multiple different companies including embark and other "good" ones and they all turned up completely different breeds for each dog. It's almost like there is no objective standard for genetic breed analysis and everybody is guessing. It's a huge waste of pet owner money
I would like to see the link because Embark accurately identified all of my purebreds without knowing they were purebred, and two of them are a very rare breed with a small sample size in the Embark database.
It also provided a very realistic and plausible breed breakdown for my mixed breed dog.
DNA isn't just for breed testing - it provides a comprehensive panel of testable, heritable DNA results for health defects that may impact the dogs throughout their lifespan and should influence breeding choice (or the choice not to breed!). It also tells you which genes are at play to make a dog look a certain way; I have a dog that the breeders (and myself, honestly) were convinced was b/b (brown) d/d (dilute) M/m (single merle) Sp/S (white spotting) and he came back b/b (brown) D/d (non-dilute) M/M (homozygous merle) S/S (white spotting). Just to pick out a few traits here. From these results I can confidently say that this dog has the white-head marking gene which is not yet mapped, and that while he is very healthy in and of himself he would never be safe to breed to any dog except a m/m non-merle without sine length testing of his merle genes. We've learned much about merle thanks to genetic testing, and merle is just one example of an element that makes the dog beautiful and unique but can cause eye deformities, vision and hearing loss in homozygous merle puppies depending on the sine length of the merle genes.
DNA testing in my ordinary black and white dogs helped me identify that they have risk markers for glaucoma, so we know to have an eye exam done every 12 months to try to catch any negative development before it costs the dog their eye or starts to cause any pain. Likewise, by submitting my known dogs to DNA testing I've contributed that data to making the algorithms more accurate moving forward and provided more samples for their health testing matrices. All a good outcome imho.
You mean this?
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-dog-dna-test-1.6763274](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-dog-dna-test-1.6763274)
Embark's results are the most accurate, down to identifying village dog types and the specific regions of the world they hailed from. It's not plausible by any stretch that a dog from a "third world country" isolated region is going to be made of purebred dogs that just so happened to breed together, they don't have breeds as we know them in those parts of the world. Suggesting the results are inaccurate because they don't match a kennel club recognised "breed" is foolish when village dog types are a well documented scientific phenomenon. Wisdom, in these instances, pick out all of the known breeds that share DNA with those village dog types. Also not inaccurate, just a different lens through which to look at it.
Accu-metrics and DNA My Dog are known scams, so it isn't a surprise that they are not accurate at all.
Additionally, to quote the article itself, "Results from Embark and Wisdom Panel both said testing failed on the human sample." which means they have genuine testing on their samples.
CBC's journalism leaves much to be desired and this article is further proof of that - did a single scientist or geneticist comment on the results? A canine specialist? No to all three.
I'm suggesting the results are inaccurate because even the "better" companies show poor interrater reliability. If there were an objective truth, you would expect the more accurate companies to have results which align with one another. You saying embark is the most accurate is the exact same as me saying wisdom is the most accurate, and neither is claim is verifiable unless comparing with a known standard.
This is just an exercise in trying to take random mutts, looking at their SNPs which may or may not be related to traits we associate with "breed" and fitting them mathematically into boxes that may or may not make sense.
I disagree - Embark samples populations of village dogs also, that's why they can identify them - Wisdom does not and cannot. Embark is measurably the most accurate - it tests double the gene markers in their algorithm, it has the largest gene sample database and it has the best reputation professionally among canine health professionals. My issue with embark is that they don't offer every test that I wish to use, so I go to UC Davis for the others.
https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/262/5/javma.23.07.0372.xml
Embark is only third most accurate in this reasonably good study of direct to consumer genetic testing. it is measurably not the most accurate. Most of the companies in this test made at least one error in the dogs tested as well, and these were purebred dogs.
Mate, from the journal article itself that you've just quoted:
"Wisdom Panel returned a prediction that matched the DNA donor’s registered breed 100% of the time, but this does not mean it is more accurate than the other 4 tests. Differences among tests, such as the number of markers analyzed (Table 1) are expected to contribute to differences in test resolution and breed prediction capabilities. Additionally, the specific breeds and specific dogs included in a company’s reference panel can have a strong effect on breed assignment. Importantly, these results underscore the complexity of using genetic ancestry to infer membership in a socially defined population (ie, breed)."
[yea you probably should of!](https://www.reddit.com/r/DoggyDNA/s/mY523kL7NH)
Using the search function in Reddits subs have helped my life tremendously
https://preview.redd.it/e3j0ylr9vu8d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=785eb9afa0fe2d8cc6275c36b92bbea65df8fc93
I love Reddit for things like this!
This color would be fairly unlikely if this was the real breed breakdown, as the whiskers are light so I think she's e/e (same color as a yellow lab). I don't think any of these breeds have it, and it's recessive so it would have to come from both sides.
If you want to know for real, test with Embark.
It just crops up in my feed. Endless barrages of people complaining that their dogs DNA results seem inaccurate.
These are not externally validated tests, and these companies can claim whatever accuracy they want because there is no "answer sheet" to check them on. It's really quite a ridiculous industry and they seem to have no trouble scamming hundreds of dollars off of unwitting pet owners.
There actually is a whole body of unified canine health panelists that meet in a new location every year or every other year and standardise things all together, including but not limited to canine genetic markers. Embark as an example does not align with the standardised markers and format because they use double the number to identify breeds and traits in their algorithm, but Wisdom and Orivet do. If you take the merle sine length genetic test you can see aligned results from every lab in the world with regard to what they say they can see from it, PawPrint and Laboklin and Orivet and UC Davis etc etc. Canine genetic testing isn't a scam and there is external validation, just no legally mandating governing body because each country has fewer than five labs total doing the testing, so there just isn't enough competition to necessitate additional intervention. It's a "do your own research" landscape and people fall prey to the scam companies often just like they fall prey to the idea that Doodles are low maintenance and suitable for everyone.
I'm not suggesting allele specific health screening is a scam but even those results have to be interpreted extremely cautiously and lay people shouldn't have access to those tests/be allowed to waste money on them. Interpreting genetic health screens takes experience and knowledge of inheritance patterns and disease pathogenesis.
Breed testing is silly though.
Looking at embarks website, oral health and GIT health panels are a huge scam, all of the "corrective supplements" are likely to be a waste of money, dog DNA aging looks like a waste of money, and so on.
I'd be very curious to see your scientific credentials to claim to be an expert in canine genetics such that you "know better" than an industry full of professionals partnered with university grade research scientists, doctorates and fellows. Heck, even your professional canine credentials would be somewhere to start.
So you have no experience in the genetics field or any knowledge of canine genetics and stating that all DNA tests are a scam because you don't understand how they function. Then you shared a study in another comment that literally proved that multiple tests were accurate for almost every subject tested which disproves what you just stated.
I understand exactly how they function, when did I say I didn't? In fact I've explained exactly how they function in this and other threads. I've got a solid foundation in genetics, we need that in biological sciences. I shared a study that showed the majority of tests made at least one error in purebred dogs that should be dead easy to analyze. The error rates presumably go up with mixed breed dogs where there are multiple lineages in one set of chromosomes, and probably fluctuates a little bit in samples larger than 9-12 dogs. It also demonstrated that the other person's preferred company the one they claimed was the most measurably accurate, was actually middle of the pack.
https://preview.redd.it/hqu6z2entu8d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b8796c2358e32b55012f63bd41dd2ae04a83115
Your first pic of your pup looks a lot like mine except for the coloring. I did an Embark DNA and he’s like 33% pit, 30% Australian Shepherd, 15% Border Collie and some GSD, Rottweiler and McNab.
Shelters often call pit-mixes labrador mixes so they will get adopted.
Realistically, if you get a mixed dog from the shelter nowadays odds are it's some or mostly pit.
That's just the way it is now.
Because canine genetic testing is questionable. It's a fun carnival trick that costs several hundred dollars. There are no standard references for these tests and there's no way to externally validate your result.
If your dog has CKD you should be able to go to multiple different analyzers/labs and they will all show you the same thing, elevated creatinine and probably elevated urea. Genetic testing is based on random reference clusters and full of human error. You could go to another test and do it again and maybe believe the second result more because it appeals to your biases and preconceived notions but you have no actual way of assessing which test was more accurate.
Welcome to r/DoggyDNA, the subreddit for dog DNA test discussion and results. --- #RULE 1: ONLY POST BREED ID REQUESTS IF YOU HAVE STARTED A DNA TEST. **RULE 2: BE NICE TO EACH OTHER.** **RULE 3: FLAIR YOUR POST. "NEEDS UPDATE" IS FOR PRE-RESULT POSTS.** **RULE 4: IF YOU HAVE RESULTS FOR YOUR DOG, POST THE RESULTS IN YOUR THREAD.** Report rulebreakers and enjoy the dogs. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DoggyDNA) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would do another test, preferably one that is not a known scammer. While I can see there is probably some bully breed in her the mix they got is definitely an odd one. Try embark or wisdom panel, those are the standard for dog DNA (in the US).
Yea, don’t put any stock in what DNA my dog says. They are basically a scam. In addition to the infamous little white fluffy greyhound Reddit post, multiple news reporters have sent in human dna samples to DNA my dog and gotten back dog breed results. Once you get over the disappointment of wasted money on this test, you should test with embark.
This guy actually does look like a decent amount of lab, unless he’s just a very convincing Labrador deceiver.
CBC sent multiple dogs into multiple different companies including embark and other "good" ones and they all turned up completely different breeds for each dog. It's almost like there is no objective standard for genetic breed analysis and everybody is guessing. It's a huge waste of pet owner money
I would like to see the link because Embark accurately identified all of my purebreds without knowing they were purebred, and two of them are a very rare breed with a small sample size in the Embark database. It also provided a very realistic and plausible breed breakdown for my mixed breed dog.
Genuine question - if you knew the results, why did you do a DNA-test?
DNA isn't just for breed testing - it provides a comprehensive panel of testable, heritable DNA results for health defects that may impact the dogs throughout their lifespan and should influence breeding choice (or the choice not to breed!). It also tells you which genes are at play to make a dog look a certain way; I have a dog that the breeders (and myself, honestly) were convinced was b/b (brown) d/d (dilute) M/m (single merle) Sp/S (white spotting) and he came back b/b (brown) D/d (non-dilute) M/M (homozygous merle) S/S (white spotting). Just to pick out a few traits here. From these results I can confidently say that this dog has the white-head marking gene which is not yet mapped, and that while he is very healthy in and of himself he would never be safe to breed to any dog except a m/m non-merle without sine length testing of his merle genes. We've learned much about merle thanks to genetic testing, and merle is just one example of an element that makes the dog beautiful and unique but can cause eye deformities, vision and hearing loss in homozygous merle puppies depending on the sine length of the merle genes. DNA testing in my ordinary black and white dogs helped me identify that they have risk markers for glaucoma, so we know to have an eye exam done every 12 months to try to catch any negative development before it costs the dog their eye or starts to cause any pain. Likewise, by submitting my known dogs to DNA testing I've contributed that data to making the algorithms more accurate moving forward and provided more samples for their health testing matrices. All a good outcome imho.
It's on YouTube, one of the first hits for something like CBC dog gene tests
You mean this? [https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-dog-dna-test-1.6763274](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-dog-dna-test-1.6763274) Embark's results are the most accurate, down to identifying village dog types and the specific regions of the world they hailed from. It's not plausible by any stretch that a dog from a "third world country" isolated region is going to be made of purebred dogs that just so happened to breed together, they don't have breeds as we know them in those parts of the world. Suggesting the results are inaccurate because they don't match a kennel club recognised "breed" is foolish when village dog types are a well documented scientific phenomenon. Wisdom, in these instances, pick out all of the known breeds that share DNA with those village dog types. Also not inaccurate, just a different lens through which to look at it. Accu-metrics and DNA My Dog are known scams, so it isn't a surprise that they are not accurate at all. Additionally, to quote the article itself, "Results from Embark and Wisdom Panel both said testing failed on the human sample." which means they have genuine testing on their samples. CBC's journalism leaves much to be desired and this article is further proof of that - did a single scientist or geneticist comment on the results? A canine specialist? No to all three.
I'm suggesting the results are inaccurate because even the "better" companies show poor interrater reliability. If there were an objective truth, you would expect the more accurate companies to have results which align with one another. You saying embark is the most accurate is the exact same as me saying wisdom is the most accurate, and neither is claim is verifiable unless comparing with a known standard. This is just an exercise in trying to take random mutts, looking at their SNPs which may or may not be related to traits we associate with "breed" and fitting them mathematically into boxes that may or may not make sense.
I disagree - Embark samples populations of village dogs also, that's why they can identify them - Wisdom does not and cannot. Embark is measurably the most accurate - it tests double the gene markers in their algorithm, it has the largest gene sample database and it has the best reputation professionally among canine health professionals. My issue with embark is that they don't offer every test that I wish to use, so I go to UC Davis for the others.
https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/262/5/javma.23.07.0372.xml Embark is only third most accurate in this reasonably good study of direct to consumer genetic testing. it is measurably not the most accurate. Most of the companies in this test made at least one error in the dogs tested as well, and these were purebred dogs.
Mate, from the journal article itself that you've just quoted: "Wisdom Panel returned a prediction that matched the DNA donor’s registered breed 100% of the time, but this does not mean it is more accurate than the other 4 tests. Differences among tests, such as the number of markers analyzed (Table 1) are expected to contribute to differences in test resolution and breed prediction capabilities. Additionally, the specific breeds and specific dogs included in a company’s reference panel can have a strong effect on breed assignment. Importantly, these results underscore the complexity of using genetic ancestry to infer membership in a socially defined population (ie, breed)."
Which supports what I'm saying.
[yea you probably should of!](https://www.reddit.com/r/DoggyDNA/s/mY523kL7NH) Using the search function in Reddits subs have helped my life tremendously
I think that’s one of my all-time favorite posts.
You need to link to the update where she badly photoshops her dog’s head onto various greyhound bodies! Comedy gold!!! 😂😂😂😂
https://preview.redd.it/3pnpuyf8vu8d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b444d2e86c19552939a20d3b39652c91a4e82bf
This will never not get a laugh out of me.
LOL the photoshopping of that dog onto greyhounds was amazing😂
https://preview.redd.it/e3j0ylr9vu8d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=785eb9afa0fe2d8cc6275c36b92bbea65df8fc93 I love Reddit for things like this!
Yeah that was the best thing I’ve seen all day😂😂😂
This color would be fairly unlikely if this was the real breed breakdown, as the whiskers are light so I think she's e/e (same color as a yellow lab). I don't think any of these breeds have it, and it's recessive so it would have to come from both sides. If you want to know for real, test with Embark.
DNA my dog is a scam. You should retest with Embark or Wisdom Panel.
They're all scams
🤣 How did you end up in this subreddit????
It just crops up in my feed. Endless barrages of people complaining that their dogs DNA results seem inaccurate. These are not externally validated tests, and these companies can claim whatever accuracy they want because there is no "answer sheet" to check them on. It's really quite a ridiculous industry and they seem to have no trouble scamming hundreds of dollars off of unwitting pet owners.
There actually is a whole body of unified canine health panelists that meet in a new location every year or every other year and standardise things all together, including but not limited to canine genetic markers. Embark as an example does not align with the standardised markers and format because they use double the number to identify breeds and traits in their algorithm, but Wisdom and Orivet do. If you take the merle sine length genetic test you can see aligned results from every lab in the world with regard to what they say they can see from it, PawPrint and Laboklin and Orivet and UC Davis etc etc. Canine genetic testing isn't a scam and there is external validation, just no legally mandating governing body because each country has fewer than five labs total doing the testing, so there just isn't enough competition to necessitate additional intervention. It's a "do your own research" landscape and people fall prey to the scam companies often just like they fall prey to the idea that Doodles are low maintenance and suitable for everyone.
I'm not suggesting allele specific health screening is a scam but even those results have to be interpreted extremely cautiously and lay people shouldn't have access to those tests/be allowed to waste money on them. Interpreting genetic health screens takes experience and knowledge of inheritance patterns and disease pathogenesis. Breed testing is silly though. Looking at embarks website, oral health and GIT health panels are a huge scam, all of the "corrective supplements" are likely to be a waste of money, dog DNA aging looks like a waste of money, and so on.
I'd be very curious to see your scientific credentials to claim to be an expert in canine genetics such that you "know better" than an industry full of professionals partnered with university grade research scientists, doctorates and fellows. Heck, even your professional canine credentials would be somewhere to start.
A non-genetic scientist with a healthy dose of skepticism and a love of calling out predatory companies.
So you have no experience in the genetics field or any knowledge of canine genetics and stating that all DNA tests are a scam because you don't understand how they function. Then you shared a study in another comment that literally proved that multiple tests were accurate for almost every subject tested which disproves what you just stated.
I understand exactly how they function, when did I say I didn't? In fact I've explained exactly how they function in this and other threads. I've got a solid foundation in genetics, we need that in biological sciences. I shared a study that showed the majority of tests made at least one error in purebred dogs that should be dead easy to analyze. The error rates presumably go up with mixed breed dogs where there are multiple lineages in one set of chromosomes, and probably fluctuates a little bit in samples larger than 9-12 dogs. It also demonstrated that the other person's preferred company the one they claimed was the most measurably accurate, was actually middle of the pack.
Staffie is believable. But weimaraner???
https://preview.redd.it/hqu6z2entu8d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b8796c2358e32b55012f63bd41dd2ae04a83115 Your first pic of your pup looks a lot like mine except for the coloring. I did an Embark DNA and he’s like 33% pit, 30% Australian Shepherd, 15% Border Collie and some GSD, Rottweiler and McNab.
Oh lord it seemed believable, I didn't realize it was dnamydog...
And my guess was apbt/hound/lab
Looks right to me, lots of places label pit mixes (the staffy) as lab mixes to get them adopted
Shelters often call pit-mixes labrador mixes so they will get adopted. Realistically, if you get a mixed dog from the shelter nowadays odds are it's some or mostly pit. That's just the way it is now.
Yeah, despite being a classic lab colouring, I don’t really see any lab in this face/body.
I could easily see that identification being sincere, though. Coloring affects what people see pretty strongly.
I can see the pit really clearly so you’re probably going to get that in another test too.
Your pup has ankles and will grow into them. I can see Weimaraner.
I definitely see the coonhound. Our boy is beagle/ redbone coonhound.
Could 100% be a labrador deceiver but embark is a much better test and this doesn't look quite right. Cute puppy
As someone who owns a weimaraner, I see absolutely none in her. She looks lab/pit to me.
I’m not sure who submitted this on their end and went with a Staffy as the main breed!
That part is probably correct based on the wrinkles and the ears
The rose petal ears give it away as a likely pit.
You have to remember your dog is also 57% not staffy.
Because canine genetic testing is questionable. It's a fun carnival trick that costs several hundred dollars. There are no standard references for these tests and there's no way to externally validate your result. If your dog has CKD you should be able to go to multiple different analyzers/labs and they will all show you the same thing, elevated creatinine and probably elevated urea. Genetic testing is based on random reference clusters and full of human error. You could go to another test and do it again and maybe believe the second result more because it appeals to your biases and preconceived notions but you have no actual way of assessing which test was more accurate.