Reply To: How comprehensive is your canine DNA database?

[rebecca rice]

I have been thinking about this, and the bit about “indemnify and hold harmless”, and would like to suggest that, when and if you give breed results, you phrase it carefully. Apparently, there has been at least one case where someone did a breed test on a registered purebred, and it came back stating that one of the grandparents was not that breed, even though the breeder swore up and down that they were. It is possible that the breeder was lying, but it is also possible that one of the grandparents just had gene-positions-that-aren’t-as-common in that breed. They were forced to declare that dog, and all of the dogs of that line, as non-purebred, and that caused them a lot of problems since many of the dogs had been bought for showing and breeding. When I did the Wisdom panel, they clearly stated that there could be issues with the breed identifications if there were large differences between the field lines and show lines, or between American and European populations of the breed. So, I would suggest that, instead of saying something like “your dog is 25% German Shepherd, 50% Chihuahua, and 25% Lab” you go with wording like “X% of your dogs genetic markers are similar to those found in breed…” Because, as I understand the system and statistics, it is statistically possible that there is a purebred dog out there that has none of the common breed markers, and just as statistically possible that there is some random mutt that has all of a breed’s common markers. Statistics being what they are, it’s a very very very rare possibility, but still, not impossible. So, just to cover yourself, and be clear on what the information shows, I would phrase the results very carefully.