Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
brittney loganKeymasterHi Ashley, no doubt these dogs a beautiful and quite interesting! To answer your question, we prefer that dogs enrolled in our study be apart of a family where the owners know the dogs behavior. Our goal is to find correlations between behavior and genetics, and if staff don’t really know shelter dogs, then their answers on the surveys will not be reliable. Thank you for asking, and I hope the dogs going through the shelters find loving homes in no time!
December 27, 2016 at 9:31 pm in reply to: What kind of information will we get about our dogs? #5746
brittney loganKeymasterHi Becky, we will certainly inform participants. We have not yet gone through to determine which dogs will be prioritized. When we have chosen we will certainly let participants know. We wish that we could genotype all of the dogs that are enrolled, but we just don’t have the resources/money to do so right now. Like I mentioned before though, in the future we certainly want to assess all of the dogs enrolled!
brittney loganKeymasterHi Christina, thank you for becoming a Darwin’s Dogs member! To get started you will need to create separate profiles for each of your dogs. In their profiles you will find 15 short behavioral surveys, make sure to complete all 15 for both dogs. Once you have done so, please validate your mailing address so we can send you the DNA kits! Please note that the kits will staggered when sending them out in the mail. This is to avoid using the wrong kit, as each kit is specifically ID for each individual dog. Have fun, and please let us know if you have any further questions! 🙂
December 27, 2016 at 2:31 pm in reply to: What kind of information will we get about our dogs? #5744
brittney loganKeymasterHi Katie, great questions, but a hard ones to answer as of right now. We have now are approaching 12,000 dogs enrolled in our study and just don’t have the ability to genotype all of the dogs right away. This means that we will soon have to prioritize dogs based on our scientific need. Not all dogs will be chosen, but in the future we want to analyze all of them! As for the results, yes we will be providing participants will all data that comes out of this study. When results are ready we will be posting them to participant profiles for viewing. We will be able to detect variants related to genetic disease, but we are not veterinarians, and cannot give any further information about it. With the data, we will only be able to tell you what is genetically present and potentially effecting behavior. Also, please note that we are not a breed test. We are looking for correlations between genetics and behavior, but if the data reveals more such as ancestry we will provide you with that information. Thanks Katie!
brittney loganKeymasterYou are welcome and Happy Holidays!
brittney loganKeymasterHi Carlos, I checked your information and you are all set to receive a DNA kit! I would suspect this will take about a week to get to you. We are doing much better at getting kits to eligible participants. When your dog is assigned a kit ID number (located in the Personalized Feedback section) this means that the kit has been assigned and is in the mail! As for the results, we cannot yet put a timeline on when they will be ready for participants viewing. This research is still very young, but we are so excited to assess the samples!
brittney loganKeymasterHi Amanda! Thank you very much for your participation we are all very excited for this huge study! Unfortunately, I cannot provide a time frame for when the results will be available. We are still collecting samples as of right now and testing the genochip that we will run the samples on. Once that is ready, we can run the samples then look into the computational work to determine what the raw data means, then make sense of it all to provide to you. Science certainly takes time and is quite unpredictable. I wish I could tell you more about when the results will be ready, but we are still in at the beginning stages of this research. I can say though, that when the results are ready, we will be posting them to your personal Darwin’s Dogs profile. Hope this helps!
brittney loganKeymasterWow thank you for sharing, this is great!
brittney loganKeymasterHi Becky, we did genotype 500 sample already too assess how the chip is working. We have not yet sent any other sample out for testing though as we are still collecting. As for the result, we plan on uploading the information to each participants personal profile so it will not be public. We cannot yet provide a timeline for when results will be ready, as science takes time and can be unpredictable. We are looking forward to seeing what the DNA will reveal as well!
December 5, 2016 at 1:00 pm in reply to: Questions about sample collection and social media posting #5498
brittney loganKeymasterSusan, we will be able to send you a new DNA kit soon. Accidents happen, no worries. Thank you for your participation!
brittney loganKeymasterHi Rachel and car2ner! What a fun topic! If either of you would like to upload videos or pictures to show off your dogs tricks you are more than welcome to do so on our social media pages located at the bottom right hand corner of this page.
We love to show off Darwin’s Dogs participants! 🙂
brittney loganKeymasterHi car2ner, we are certainly taking into consideration the sex of the dog and if the dog is intact or not. It is very important that owners have this information in the profiles. Hormones definitely do impact behaviors in dogs, especially females as you have noticed. Great post, very interesting!
November 15, 2016 at 2:06 pm in reply to: Questions about sample collection and social media posting #5491
brittney loganKeymasterHi Nancy, we are still collecting samples from participants and waiting to run more samples on the genochip. It is going to take time with this research since it is such a large scale project. We cannot yet say a date for when the results will come out, all we can say is that it will take time and we ask for your patience. When results do come out, we will be posting your dogs result to your Darwin’s Dogs profile.
We have a Monthly News Letter with updates about the research. This months newsletter will be available on this webpage shortly! The best way to stay informed about this research is to check this webpage, the news letter and follow us on social media. We are eager to see what the results of this research bring, but as I mentioned it will take time. We appreciate your patience and support! Thank you!
brittney loganKeymasterHi Sue, when the results come in we certainly will notify participants. Most likely the notification will appear on your profile which will show your dogs results. It would be a bit complicated to email each participant about their individual results. We are still collecting samples from participants and waiting to run the samples, so it will still be a while until we are able to assess results.
Keep checking our webpage and newsletter for updates about the research! Our November news letter will be available on this webpage shortly! Thank you for your participation and patience.
brittney loganKeymasterHi Becky, you can post photos of your dog(s) onto our Facebook wall or tag us on Instagram @darwinsdogs. The link to get to these social media pages on located at the bottom right on this page. If you have not already sent in your kit, you can also put a picture in the kit when you mail it in and we can add it to our Doggy Participant Wall here at Umass! We also have Dog of the Month which you can enroll your dog in, post a cute picture and tell us about your pup!
-
AuthorPosts
