Would you want shelter dogs to be DNA tested? Find out the pros and cons.
This discovery of mislabeling dog breeds leads to a big question: If DNA testing is able to identify a dog’s genetic makeup more accurately than staff assessment, why not implement DNA testing at every shelter?
Before we answer that, we need to discuss a few details about DNA testing, starting with what it is exactly. Just like humans, dogs have their own DNA that makes them who they are. The way DNA testing works is that a sample of a dog’s DNA is collected by cheek swab, or in some cases a blood test, then sent to a company who run it against a database of breed-specific markers to find matches. By identifying these breed-specific markers, the company will be able to give the owner a better idea of their dog’s genetic history.
Sounds pretty simple, right? Not quite.
One of the biggest concerns with doggie DNA testing is that the process is not entirely accurate. There are currently a number of companies on the market with databases of several hundred breed-specific profiles to which DNA samples can be compared. While these numbers are impressive, there is more than twice that number of recognized dog breeds in the world.
It’s important to note that the accuracy of these results also depend on the quality of the sample that is provided. When done correctly, these tests can have up to a 90% accuracy rate.
If you’ve ever tried to give your dog a pill, you know exactly how difficult it can be to get something into the mouth of a squirming pup. Now multiply this by the couple hundred or thousand dogs that arrive at shelters each year and you can see that there is considerable room for human error that could degrade the quality of the results.
This doesn’t mean that DNA testing should be completely forgone. Even with the degree of error that can occur with cheek swab tests, these DNA tests can narrow down the breed category that your dog belongs to.
Learning the identity of a similar breed can still give you a lot of valuable information about a dog because as we mentioned earlier, the closer the relationship between two dogs, the more similar their DNA will be.
Despite the growing number of companies in the market, the price of a dog DNA test is still quite high, averaging between $60.00 and $85.00.
Understanding the time and budget constraints that shelters are under, Mars Veterinary has developed a line of shelter DNA tests called DogTrax.
This increased access to DNA testing has some shelters getting creative with how they use the test results.
So the question still stands: Is DNA testing a viable option for shelters?
It's no doubt that DNA testing would solve a lot of issues for dogs at animal shelters. However, they may not always be accurate and they are time-consuming and costly. It's great to be able to get as much information on our doggies as we could.
For more information on DNA testing for doggies, be sure to check out BarkPost.
