Anyone want to play the guessing game?

seriously... blood is actually a little harder to get dna from as hemoglobin is a PCR inhibitor..

ok so how these tests work...
they are checking for non coding DNA.. so they are NOT looking for the genes that give golden retievers yellow hair, or the wrinkles on a bassett... they are looking in the 'junk' DNA.

They don't look at all of it.. just a an infintesimally small part of the junk DNA.. then they run it though a computer and it somes back and says that statistically your dog has repeats in the non coding dna most similar too "insert breed here" now how do they know what breed is most similar too? Well they have a database of known purebred dogs.. but the issue is that if your dog is from different bloodlines, etc etc it won't come up.

THe part that is flawed is the statistical part.. it doesn't matter if you extract the DNA from buccal cells, blood cells, or any other tissue.. the DNA itself will be the same (well barring chimerism) the fact is there are no genes that say "JRT, or Akita"

I am sure you have heard of CODIS.. there was a case where a black man and a white man shared the same 12 out of the 13 loci that CODIS checks for.. they aren't related in anyway, not even of the same ethnicity... so if we can't do it for humans with a HUGE database.. there is no chance for us to do it reliably with canines.

Very handsome boy! I definitely see Akita in him. I see you're from Cincinnati, I'm also from the area and I don't think Canaan Dogs are very common here... but Akitas definitely are.

I vote Caanan dog or Akita.

Shiba maybe...hes kinda big tho.

He is only 65lbs... looks bigger in the picture.

Okay the funny thing is after my first Akita I swore I'd never have another one.

Now to find out he might be my THIRD Akita!!! OMG! How does this happen to me???

It's your destiny!

OKay kind of understand it... lol will admit I am not that "scientific". So how does it work when people get back a DNA test that really is similar to what their dog looks like? Esp if they did not sent a picture. Or in the case of the lady I know that sent in the wrong picture and they contacted her and asked if she was sure it was the right picture because the results did not match the picture? (if the above explains this I'm sorry.. like I said I only caught some of it.. lol I am not stupid just not real scientific)

Its not that it can't work.. its that it isn't reliable. You should NEVER send a pic with the dna test.

I bet its as reliable to ask on an active forum as it is to do those tests. Sometimes we will get it right, sometimes no.

Those test are all about probablility and statisitics. And we all know that stats are very maliable.