You'll never guess what Sabre (aka Bingo) is....(erica1989)

Hey, some Poms have eye- remember that the sheltie and german spitz have common ancestors way back when ! :P (I need to get video of Lizzie ridding our backyard of chickens next time it's her turn to do it. She gets all glarey and stalky- total other end of the spectrum from Kaylee (who is very relaxed and upright) and Mal (who is a bit less confident than Kaylee and tends to be a lot more vocal)) Indy knows that chickens are made of meat (unlike goats and sheep, as far as he knows ;P) and is just being purely predatory.)

Cait 

brookcove

Well, I really hate your friend wasted their money.  I think those tests are a lot of hooey, frankly.  And I have a couple of friends who are PhD genetic researchers who agree with me.  I have a friend who sent off their dog's information - the dog was pretty sure either Aussie or Border Collie - they just didn't know which for sure (or maybe a mix).  The dog worked sheep like a Border Collie, eyes down, lots of style.  But had a half tail and was blue merle.  The test came back Afghan . . .pit bull . . .English sheepdog . . .and pomeranian.  Not one bit of either BC or Aussie, apparently.

Yeah, right.

The problem is that those tests don't take history into account.  If they did, they'd know why a possibly pure or half BC could carry markers for any of those breeds, and still carry not a trace of blood from any purebred representative of those dogs.
 

I want to do one in a few years when the technology is better....but I bet Taz(his whole 20lbs) would come back as Neo Mastif, Pit Bull, GSD, Rotti, and BC....LOL....Ha! I bet Sam's a Chihuahua/Spitz/Afghan/Akita/Doxie. I think it's crap - but some people have luck with it.....

Hey, some Poms have eye- remember that the sheltie and german spitz have common ancestors way back when ! 

LOL.  Sorry Cait, it's not the same thing.  Eye is more than a physical posture.  It has to do with the ability to keep the stock together in a certain way, with a minimum of having to physically block escape. 

Erica, I'm not sure they'll ever be able to sort out breeds in such a way that there are discrete markers for discrete breeds.  How on earth could they tell a Hanging Tree dog from an Aussie/BC/Cat mix?  For that matter, how could they tell a Cat or any cur dog from a collie/bully breed mix, which is essentially what they are?  And BCs and Aussies themselves are "curs" as mixed breed sheepdogs were called overseas - with free intermixing between useful breeds dating to as late as the late sixties - that's within MY lifetime! 

Most of the sheepdogs are like this, as Cait points out.  In fact, those common ancestors aren't really very far back - I was reading a book the other day that descibed a wartime farm in northernmost Scotland and they had small spitz-like dogs as farm guardians and to help with the scrub "cattle."  Cattle in the northern UK describes any type of four-footed livestock, even horses.

There's only a few breeds which have been pedigreed pure for long enough to be reliably discrete in the gene pool.  And those breeds are dying out from their limited genetics!