Know Your Pet DNA Results: Dru and Piper

In my post: Take 2: my dog tail makes a new ancestry tale, I mentioned that my next post would be the results of Dru and Piper’s DNA. With all the holidays getting in the way, it took time to get us all together so we could find out what breeds they were as they are shelter dogs. We finally did the reveal on New Year’s Eve.

I wish we did some betting on this for fun, but we still enjoyed finding out together. Besides giving you Dru and Piper’s results, I will also let you know my thoughts on ‘Know Your Pet DNA’ by Ancestry. First up: ordering and delivery of the DNA kits.

Emailed Exclusive Offer

In my inbox was a brand new AncestryDNA test called “Know Your Pet DNA” and, in the email, they gave a special offer of $75 with a regular price of $99. All I have to say is, if you can wait, Ancestry usually will have better deals around the major holidays like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

I decided to order then, though, as this made a nice birthday present to our daughter. Piper is really her dog, and she has been wondering about her breed since Piper was a pup.

So, I clicked on “Find out more” and ordered two kits.

Every step of the way

I received my order email where they said what happens next. Ancestry kept me informed every step of the way. I received email updates like:

Great News Your Pet DNA kit has shipped.
Perfect, you’ve registered your kit successfully.
Their samples are in the lab.
DNA results are here.

Ancestry Know Your Pet DNA offers an engaging way to keep you informed and excited about knowing your pet’s DNA. Two sayings I thought were cute: “Once you mail the sample, there’ll be a paws of 6-8 weeks for us to receive and analyze it” and the other was “So sit down with Piper/Dru, have a cuddle and explore them together.”

Results

So, while cuddling our dogs, we first looked at Piper’s results. The first two we already suspected, but the others surprised us. We knew Piper was part lab as she loves the water and you see she looked part lab. At 14, she still swims in the lake with my daughter.

The way her ears cocked always hinted she was probably part pit bull, but golden retriever, boxer and chow chow came as a complete surprise.

Dru’s Results:

Looking at Dru’s results, again, we were spot on with German Sheperd and Rottweiler. But the pit bull and chow chow breeds came out of left field.

When looking at the results, they made it easy to click through and see each breed with information about the breed, origination, care, and traits. Once done with the breeds, I checked out their DNA matches and pawfect pairs.

If you click on the little “i” circle icon, to the right of each label it explains each of the groups.

‘DNA matches’ are genetically matched to your pet, determined by a significant percent of shared DNA.

So, for Piper, her highest percentage DNA out of the current pool of 230 matches was 21% with a 94% Labrador Retriever breed, located in the United States. Whereas Dru Einstein’s biggest DNA percentage match was 30% out of a pool of 221 matches, that the dog was 100% German shepherd located in Australia.

‘Pawfect Pairs’ are determined by having a lower percentage of shared DNA but share common breed types and are geographically closer to your pet’s location.

Based on the information about Pawfect pairs, they share a very low percentage of DNA, but have matched them based on percentage of the breed.

One thing I noticed was that most profiles didn’t have where their dogs were born. If the owner doesn’t fill in where the dog is from, it just gives a general country like in Dru and Piper’s case, USA. By filling it in at least the results would be a little more interesting for both DNA sharing and Pawfect pairs. I went back to each of their profiles and updated where they were born. Hopefully, this will change over time as more profiles are added.

While working on this post I noticed a button to chat with other pet parents. I didn’t see anyone to chat with and, quite frankly, I am not sure what I would ask.

Ancestry Account

When I ordered and registered their kits, I tied it to my Ancestry account. After clicking the link from my email and logging in to the Know your pet DNA dashboard, I wondered if I could go through my Ancestry account like with my DNA as this would be so much easier when I visit to see the updates.

It takes a few clicks, but you can get to it from your Ancestry account.

After signing into Ancestry you will see the tab ‘DNA’. Click that, and a dropdown menu will appear. Know Your Pet DNA is the last on the list.
Click ‘Know Your Pet DNA’ and it will take you to their web page.
On the upper right side, I clicked on “Dashboard”.
That took me to the login page, I clicked login, a box flashed, and I was logged into their dashboard.

Hopefully, down the road it will just be a matter of clicking the know your pet DNA to take me to their page. At least I know how to get there from my Ancestry page and not have a separate login to deal with.

Add a Pet Member Option

All our pets are part of our family, and when they die, we all mourn in our own way. Ancestry seems to understand this connection as they added Know Your Pet DNA to their offerings. Since our pets are family, they need to include “pet” to add a family member. Remember: your ancestry tree will give your ancestor lines complete with necessary documentation, but it is also chronicling family history of all family members and that should include our loveable family pets.

By having a full detailed account of all family members, the next generations can truly understand their family history. Everyday living makes for wonderful family history.

Know Your Pet DNA

All in all, everything from Ancestry moved fast. We, on the other hand, had a hard time getting our acts together.

First, it was getting both dogs together to get the saliva sample. We had to postpone once as the dogs drank water. They aren’t allowed to drink for 30 minutes beforehand. The other condition we had was that the whole family had to be together when we cuddled the dogs and explored their DNA.

We ordered September 29th, did the sampling on Thanksgiving, and Ancestry actually had the results back by December 11th. Nobody peeked at the results, and we finally were all together on New Year’s eve.

This was a fun family activity to discover their breed/s, traits and DNA, but to make it more interesting have some fun with it. Maybe a little betting pool or even plan a doggie party with their favorite treats.

My only recommendation is to buy the kits on a deeper sale discount, as $75 plus shipping is on the pricey side when compared to the regular Ancestry DNA kits.

You get more bang for your buck with the human DNA kits as there is just a lot more to discover than you do with the Pet DNA.

We had so much fun learning about Piper and Dru’s DNA. I hope now that Ancestry has added the pet DNA, they will also add the option to add our loveable pets to our ancestry tree. After all, they are members of the family and should be documented on their own page on our family tree.