[brittney logan]

Hi Samantha,

This means that your dogs saliva sample is now shipped out to a lab to be sequenced! This is a research study where we wanted to uncover what is hidden in your dogs DNA and see if there are correlations between behavior! That is our long term goal and it will take time as it has never been done before. We will also be looking into your dogs ancestry ancestory once we get the raw data back from being sequenced.

Below is a link to one our stories, which I think will help you to better understand the sequencing process that your dogs DNA sample is going through! 🙂

How we get information from your dogs DNA

[brittney logan]

Hi Megan,

Thank you for reaching out, but we are no longer answering personal DNA kit questions on our forums. Please email us at team@darwinsark.org and we will look into your case, thanks! 🙂

[brittney logan]

Hi Ellen,

Yes, it should be working. Please select a photo and then once chosen scroll to the bottom of the page and hit the submit button. A popup should appear letting you know it was successfully uploaded.

If this does not work, please email us at support@darwinsark.org so we can look more closely into your case.

[brittney logan]

Thank you for the great replied David and Kristen! 🙂

Courtnie-quinton the surveys are located on your dogs profile. You will see on the right hand side “View Surveys”. A list of them will appear and you can start taking them! There are a total of 21 surveys, and as David mentioned, if you fill out at least 10 you will receive a discount if you decide to receive the kit ASAP and fund the sample so that you get through our process much quicker.

The more surveys you answer the better the analysis!

[brittney logan]

Hi Robyn,

Your dogs sample is being sequenced now! You can see the status on your dogs profile and it will change as it moves through our pipeline.

When a participating for free, there are a few things that we take into consideration when choosing a sample to go out for sequencing. The grant money that we have is one of the biggest factors. Right now we have money to study allergies, so if your dog has allergies then we can fund that sample to go out. Behavior is another factor, if you dogs behavior is at an extreme end of the spectrum that is interesting to us. Of course we need baselines and controls, so we do also pick at random. There are many other things that can affect when a sample will go out for sequencing, and that is why we cannot provide and exact timeline to everyone who is participating for free.

We do absolutely want to and have the goal to sequence all sample that come into us, it is just that the timeline will vary. I hope this helps, it is a great question!

[brittney logan]

Great question! We plan to have the first batch of results up very soon (within the next week or two)! The results will be uploaded to your dogs profile and we do plan to send out an email.

Right now we are still working with the new webpage layout, and getting it formatted so you can easily view the results. Once we have all of the kinks worked out, we will be uploading!

[brittney logan]

Hi Julielani,

We do not have a survey that particularly focus on familiar people and your dog. That is a great idea though and we are happy to keep adding more surveys to learn even more about your dog!

For your situation, if I call correctly, other surveys that might relate would be “Attitude” “Communication” and “Independence”. If you see that the way you answered these before no longer match up to how you would answer now, you are welcome to retake them.

[brittney logan]

Great question Jamie!

We are working on making that happen! For now though, you can email support@darwinsark.org and let us know who in particular you would like to help out and we can manually do it from there for you.

[brittney logan]

Hi Dawn,

Thank you for bringing that up, great point!

With the new webpage, the age entry is quite dynamic now. When people entered in their dogs birthday (an actual date) the webpage will automatically keep track the dogs age based on that date! So is participants that have/had entered in a birthday before will stay updated.

[brittney logan]

Charmaine,

No need to start over, we have your dogs samples here safe and sounds. We are absolutely still sending out samples and analyzing them.

If you wish to remain participating for free, no action is needed on your dogs profile. If you would like to fund your dogs samples, you can click on the “Order Analysis” button to see the options.

Since we do have your dogs samples here and the surveys are filled out, it is only $99.00 to fund them. That is not very clear in our FAQ and we are working to update that! Again, completely optional and up to you!

[brittney logan]

Charmaine and Jamie,

With our new collaborations and methods we plan to make this project run as smoothly and quickly as possible. But you are enrolling your dog in research, this is not a business. Wait times will vary, there is no doubt about that since grant money can be slow to receive.

In order to let our participants have more of a say and options though, that is why we made Darwin’s Ark into a non-profit so that if you don’t want to wait, then you can fund your dogs sample.

[brittney logan]

I do want to point out something that may not be very clear on our participation levels.

If we already have your dogs sample and you have filled out the surveys, you would only need to fund your dogs sample for $99.00 (this will show up on your profile and is not in our FAQ just yet.)

Again, funding your dogs sample is optional. We will be putting our grant money towards funding the samples that are at the free participation level.

[brittney logan]

Randy,

We do completely understand your frustrations and agree two years is a long time. That is how research works sometimes though, it can be unpredictable. We did our best in those two years to get grant money, as we have, and to improve our methods and partners to assist with new technologies in sequencing. We have now come to the stage where we are confident in our methods and sequencing.

We have grant money for the participants that want to remain participating for free, especially if they have filled out all the surveys (one of our grant is covering allergies in dogs). As for participants that want their dogs sample to be sent out ASAP and therefore get the results more quickly, that is why we made this a non-profit so that they have the OPTION to fund their dogs sample.

[brittney logan]

I’d like to make it clear that Kathleen Morrill is a graduate student in our lab, helping to analyze your dogs DNA… and is not a troll. We are simply trying to clarify the new changes that we have made to this research so that owners have more options and say in what happens to their dogs samples.

If you have questions regarding your dogs sample, please email us. We want these forms to be a place of good discussion about our four legged friend and how we can help to improve their lives as well as ours.

[brittney logan]

Hi Lauren,

To generally answer that questions, it depends upon which participation level you choose. Free participation level it will take quite sometime, but Trailblazer and Explorer level will receive the results much faster since they go out for sequencing right away.

As for your dogs personal results, we are currently working on getting the formatting right on the webpage so that we can upload the results to your dogs Darwin’s Ark profile! We hope to have the results up for dogs that have been sequenced in the very near future once we have it running smoothly!

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