DNA test

We were never sure what Marley's breeding was, because he came from a shelter and they didn't know which dog was his father.  Marley's mother was a red Australian Cattle Dog (ACD).  More people who know about ACDs are familiar with the 2 blue ACD types rather than with the reds.  Everyone thought that Marley would be a huge dog, because his paws always looked big, no matter how large he grew.  We were initially told that Marley would get to be perhaps 35 pounds.  He blew through that a long time ago.  He was 11 to 12 lbs. when we brought him home almost a year ago.  He had a tremendous growth spurt between 4 and 10 months.  At 15 months, Marley is 62 lbs.  We expect that he could get just a little bit bigger.

Speculation was that Marley was part Akita, or German Shepherd, or that he was pure ACD.  The book said that ACDs get up to 45 lbs., so we knew pretty quickly that some larger breed was in the mix.  So I looked at the pictures of different breeds in the book, and then I looked closely at Marley.  Some of his features reminded me of German Shepherds.

Several people said we should do a DNA test.  They said the DNA test was simple and pretty cheap.  So, about 2 months ago, I ordered one from jbpet.com for about $60.  One night, I swabbed Marley's cheeks, put the swabs in an envelope and sealed it.  Debbie mailed it the next day.  I figured we might not get a good result.  The possibilities seemed like:
  1.  The sample was contaminated - food particles in the sample;
  2.  The sample would get lost in the mail or the testing company was a scam;
  3.  The results would not be valid for Marley's breed; or,
  4.  We would get a credible result. 

It was supposed to take about six weeks to come back and that they might send an email before the regular mail delivered a certificate.  Six weeks came and went, but we didn't get anything.  I looked for it on my email every day for another week.  Then I forgot about it, and a week later the certificate came by snail mail.  The first line said that about 30% of his background was comprised of German Shepherd.  There was a bunch of other stuff that I interpret as meaning ACD and various other mutt breeds.

Marley and I were at the dog run this weekend.  A woman asked what kind of dog he was.  I said, "ACD and German Shepherd."  She said, "I saw the Shepherd right away.  The ACD explains his body coloring.  Cool."