wisdom panel dog dna test, what are your thoughts is this a waste of money ???

Waste of money, in my opinion. Australian Shepherd seems to come up too frequently in the results - while this is a very popular breed overseas, there just aren't enough of them here to have made any impact on the mongrel gene pool, and haven't been here long enough.

Same with the "Rat Terrier" result on that TV show last week, a common USA breed but completely unknown over here.

Some of the results I've seen also come back with a hugely improbable breed as 0.5% or suchlike, presumably so owners can boast their dog is part Transylvanian Cheese Terrier.

The companies claim they can't test pure breeds, so how on earth can the crossbreed results be accurate?

>Same with the "Rat Terrier" result on that TV show last week, a common USA breed but completely unknown over here.

Exactly. Either the test is a load of baloney or  a 'rat terrier' simply a runty JR, because it's certain that a UK crossbreed isn't going to have such an alien breed in it.

They also got the cockerpoo wrong on the tv program and said poodle Springer.

One of the dog mags did a bit on dog breed DNA tests think it was dogs today. First dog was a pure kc bearded collie that came back as a cross think it named three diffrent breeds were high percentage in it. The other was a cockerpoo and the owner knew the parents were pure, that came back wrong and the third was a an unknown mutt.

The testing company said its not for pure breeds and that no data base has all the breeds in it so if one of the breeds in dog is not in there data base they just pick the closest breed'

So the company's them selves admit it's not accurate and that they can't id a pure breed dog, not surprising as there is no collie gene, cocker gene, gsd gene ect.

I've been looking on the Wisdom site at the gallery where they post the results, and having a bit of a giggle. A merle dog which looks like a Catahoula Leopard dog came back as apparently a first cross Redbone Coonhound x Golden Retriever.
Must be a case of spontaneous remutation of the merle gene then... lol

And apparently, a dog living in Leicestershire UK is 25% Catahoula.  Must be good at swimming then, it's a long way from Louisiana, and as far as I'm aware there has only ever been a handful of the breed in the UK.

From that companies website
"Wisdom Panel(TM) Insights test analyses over 300 genetic markers to determine the ancestral breed composition of a mixed-breed dog. Within this panel, there are almost no markers which are absolutely specific to one breed. Each breed will have a combination of markers within the panel that represent the breed. Within a mixed-breed dog, depending on the heritage of the breeds, not all of those markers may be passed down through the generations to appear in the genetic make-up of the dog that is tested. For example, on average, you would only expect 25% of the breed markers from a Grandparent to be passed down to the current dog. Thus, the way the test works is to use a best-fit model that is selected on the basis of the highest probability for each breed depending upon the analysis of markers that are found in the current dog. The final report is generated depending on the highest probability breeds found with a lower limit cut-off to ensure that the false positive reports are reduced to a minimum."

So basically they look to see which breeds the cross has most in common with, which as they say there is no genetic marker specific to one breed so all there doing is guessing as the cross could have say 150 markers in common with a lab but who is to say that those 150 didn't come from say 3 other breeds that also has them.

I'd class it as a bit of expensive fun.

> I'd class it as a bit of expensive fun.

Or fraud, when there's no possible way the breeds listed could be present in the makeup.

But if the company say in small print somewhere that it's not 100% accurate then surly there covered from fraud as the person paying knows it's not accurate.

The company says they don't know how accurate It is but they must be the most accurate as they have the most breeds on there data base.
Says it all realy.
Looking at the gallery now, just seen the dog with the magic murl gene wonder if the owners clicked on to that.

They also have a hairless dog there (only fur on face) that is chi and Shi Tzu, there is only a hand full of breeds with the hairless gene and they couldn't even pick out one of those.

They also got the cockerpoo wrong on the tv program and said poodle Springer.

Personally I would have been inclined to believe that one. Springer is bigger than Cocker hence a Springer bitch will quite possibly have larger litters than a Cocker bitch, and make more money....... and why else would somebody crossbreed such breeds?!


Personally I would have been inclined to believe that one. Springer is bigger than Cocker hence a Springer bitch will quite possibly have larger litters than a Cocker bitch, and make more money....... and why else would somebody crossbreed such breeds?!

Come on Goldmali everyone knows it's because they never get health problems or moult unlikely our terrible pure breeds ;)

LOL :)

An interesting point would be to know where the canine DNA samples used come from. The Wisdom Panel UK website states it is part of Mars Veterinary http://www.wisdompanel.co.uk/

London (November 11, 2011) The Kennel Club has today announced a partnership with Mars Veterinary    http://www.discoverdogs.org.uk/news/mixed-breed-dog-dna-test-launched-discover-dogs

But they certainly won't have got Rat Terrier DNA from the KC!

I wonder what they would make of your crosses Marianne.

Indeed Barbara. In fact once you'd said it my brain went into overdrive -do the test, and if I get an incorrect result, pass the story to the dog papers and a newspaper. ;) Then I checked the cost! £ 60 !!! I'm not going to waste that much money!

An interesting point would be to know where the canine DNA samples used come from. The Wisdom Panel UK website states it is part of Mars Veterinary

According to the FAQ
"Our breed database reference samples were collected with full informed consent from veterinarians, owners and breeders of dogs in the United Kingdom and the United States. "

You can get the test for £40 in some places, but it's still a lot of money for useless paper. Dogs Today did an article about the tests, Bearded Collie sample they sent in came back as everything but!

Thanks JoStockbridge.

According to the FAQ
"Our breed database reference samples were collected with full informed consent from veterinarians, owners and breeders of dogs in the United Kingdom and the United States. "

If these DNA samples came from the KC database when I paid my not inconsiderable fees for their DNA profiling service I certainly didn't understand I had "informed" consent for my dog's DNA to be used to make company profits. The KC DNA submission form states     "..........the remains of this sample may be used completely anonymously in future research programmes". I had expected " future research programmes" would either be of a charitable nature or the DNA given free for the benefit of veterinary research.

Anyone else care to put forward their point of view?

> If these DNA samples came from the KC database when I paid my not inconsiderable fees for their DNA profiling service I certainly didn't understand I had "informed" consent for my dog's DNA to be used to make company profits.

Read it back... "full informed consent"
By all means take it up with the KC, but the DNA profiling the KC does is to do with parentage, not breed analysis.