Reply To: Lancashire Heelers / Increase in already known DNA?

[Jennifer]

I don’t know what Nigel looks like, but with reference to his current breed results as mentioned in your other thread, I could definitely imagine a “Chorkie” coming out looking a fair amount like a very petite Lancashire, especially if its Chi parent were short-haired (dominant trait). All three of his primary breeds have prick ears, and they can also all be black-and-tan like Lancashires (recessive). Being 20 lbs. and dwarfed (I’m assuming you’re saying he’s dwarfed i.e. ultra-short legs) probably couldn’t be explained by those three breeds alone, but the other 10% might include a dwarfed, much heavier breed(s). In any case, Lancashires are pretty rare, even in the UK, so for a shelter mutt to be high-content-Lancashire would be very surprising, although stranger things have happened.

With this latest revision, my dog also showed gains of % ancestry for 4 of the breeds already detected in her. In her case this probably(?) has something to do with much of her ancestry consisting of rather closely related herding breeds, therefore lots of confounding genetic overlap. I’m not sure whether something like that could apply to Nigel. I think it’s maybe kinda like trying to piece together an enormous jigsaw puzzle when you don’t know what the final image is supposed to show…those portions of it that initially fall into place for you fairly quickly, you’ll probably still have to revise later, once you’ve figured out what some of the other components are, because your working mental image of each component is continuously getting modified by new information about other portions. Even so, assuming the person doing the puzzle is reasonably mentally competent, their initial misconceptions are still going to fall within a certain limited range.