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In a recent article, I discussed my experiences with Embark and Wisdom Panel dog DNA kits on my very mixed-breed dog, Grimm. At the same time I had Grimm’s DNA done with Embark, I also decided to order a home DNA (breed and health) kit for a newer addition, Milo.
Milo was a rehome I took in from a dog training client who could no longer keep him due to having to move. Even back when I was doing private lessons with Milo, he struck me as a very smart, athletic dog with a wonderful temperament.
Of course, I was curious what his breed was. When I decided to take him in and make him one of my personal dogs, I knew it was also a good idea to get a look at his genetic health so I had an idea of what to expect from him down the road.
(This is a great chance to play guess the breed before I talk about Milo’s results!)
I’m going to be talking about a lot of experiences, uses, limitations, and features in this article. So, to jump to a specific aspect of the Embark DNA test for dogs, I’m including a table of contents, shown below.
Do Dog DNA Tests Work?
I think one of the first questions you ask yourself while waiting for your dog DNA test results are if these tests even work. Dog DNA tests can be a little expensive (the Embark Breed + Health test I got for Milo runs $199 normally or $159 with discount code DOGLIFE), so if they aren’t accurate it would definitely feel like an awful waste.
It felt like a lot was riding on whether or not these dog DNA tests even work to identify breed accurately.
Thankfully, I can attest that Embark’s DNA testing works seamlessly, and after using them for two of my dogs I have full confidence in their accuracy.
I got Milo’s DNA results and have no doubt in my mind that the tests are accurate. After getting breed results back from the lab, my dog showed exactly the breeds I had guessed in him, in a combination that is entirely reflected in his physical appearance and behavioral traits.
Milo’s breed results direct from Embark came down to:
- 50% Doberman Pinscher
- 34.1% American Pit Bull Terrier
- 15.9% American Staffordshire Terrier
While my other dog, Grimm, got a breed mix that was more difficult to guess just by looking at him (but that entirely describes his unique look and behavioral tendencies), Milo’s Embark breed results were more of a confirmation of what I already suspected.
These results are almost exactly what I (and Milo’s previous owner) had guessed. A close friend had joked that, with Milo’s lean musculature and lanky frame, he resembled a “pit bull stretched over a doberman.”
It looks like Embark agrees!
What Does a Dog DNA Test Show?
What I got out of testing Milo’s DNA with Embark was way more than breed, though. Because I purchased the Breed ID + Health kit, Embark gave me access to way more information on Milo than I ever could have hoped for.
Embark’s home DNA test kits claim to give insights into:
- Breed Breakdown: testing for over 350 breeds
- Ancestry: using your dog’s markers to determine an estimation of their family tree
- Relatives: comparing your dog’s DNA against others in Embark’s database to find your dog’s relatives
- Health Screening: testing for over 210 genetic health markers
- Traits: Likelihood for your dog to show certain traits such as different coat types, coloring, muscling, and proportions
Dog DNA Testing for Relatives
Embark showed me Milo’s real existing relatives who had also taken Embark DNA tests, and gave me the ability to connect and speak with their owners should I ever want to. I haven’t yet reached out to any of them, but I like knowing that I could potentially speak to others who could possibly give me more context for the background of my mystery dog.
What I didn’t expect is for the relative feature of Embark to give me so much background on Milo in terms of where he actually came from.
While there were a few mutts like Milo in his close relatives list, most of Milo’s closest relatives were purebred dobermans. Among those were actually some registered names (RNs) complete with kennel names (KNs). This actually gave me more information on Milo than initially meets the eye, as the kennel names included for some of these registered dogs were all reputable breeders with healthy dogs.
I was surprised to see exact kennels that Milo’s purebred family are from, and delighted to find that Milo comes from strong, healthy lines on his doberman side. Even better to see that the owners and/or breeders of these dogs take their dogs’ health seriously enough to be doing genetic testing.
Embark found many dogs that were “as related as half-siblings, aunts/uncles, and grandparents,” which gave me a good idea of where Milo fit in to the bigger picture. One of the relatives on Embark’s family finder actually shared 32% DNA with 50% doberman, which makes me suspicious they may be a half-sibling through Milo’s doberman parent.
Unfortunately, Embark and other DNA home test kits cannot entirely fill those gaps for you. Embark can not confirm exactly whether dogs are littermates, siblings, cousins, aunts/uncles, etc. What dog DNA tests can do is tell you how much DNA two dogs share, and how it may correlate to how they are actually related.
But as it did in my case, this information can provide a lot of the pieces to the puzzle to give you a really good idea of where your dog fits in.
Using a Dog DNA Test to Determine Parents
I learned a lot about Milo from the relatives feature on Embark, but it did have some limitations. I think a lot of dog owners are curious if dog dna tests can determine the father and mother of their dog, specifically.
When Milo’s breed results came in, Embark used his DNA sequence to provide the best approximation of Milo’s lineage, down to the breeds of his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. I got this exact family tree for him, showing his mix of a doberman parent with a parent who was mixed APBT and AmStaff.
What Embark did not do is provide an exact pair of dogs who were Milo’s parents. That would be outside of reasonable expectation, honestly, because it would take so much in order for that to happen.
For dog owners who are trying to identify if two specific dogs are related (for instance, if you personally owned both dogs and wanted to know if one is the parent to the other) Embark can definitely compare the two to see how related they are. If they are closely related enough for one to be a parent to the other, Embark will reflect that percentage in its testing results.
In fact, Embark does offer parentage testing specifically. Embark claims that, while it is not a part of their standard testing (meaning, not included in your standard DNA test kit!) they have the means to test parentage between two available dogs and will do so at no additional charge.
However, if you are looking to seek out the parents of your dog, it will take considerably more work and a whole lot of luck. In theory, it seems that there is a chance of being able to test for this, but it would take some very favorable circumstances.
You’d have to hope that your dog’s parent has also taken an Embark DNA test so that you can become connected with them via the relatives feature. Then, you’d have to reach out on your own to the maybe-parent’s owner and hope they are interested in speaking to you. If you get that far, you’d then have to separately email Embark with the cooperation of your dog’s maybe-parent’s owner to have the two samples compared using Embark’s parentage test.
Milo, unfortunately didn’t get anywhere near that far. A lot of dogs were closely related to Milo, but mostly in the range of 28%-32% relatedness. None of the dogs in Embark’s system were related closely enough to be Milo’s parent, so in that area the search ends there.
However, Embark’s database expands with each new test, so maybe one day I will check back and find that Milo has some new relatives on his list!
Can a DNA Test Tell How Old My Dog Is?
Luckily, I knew Milo’s general age because his previous owners took him in as a puppy. A lot of other owners, especially those who got their dogs through a rehoming, shelter, or rescue, are left only with a wider estimation based on the previous owner’s educated guess.
Typically, a dog DNA test can not tell you how old your dog is. This is because DNA carries our core genetic markers that do not tend to change over time. Our dogs’ DNA determines things like physical traits (phenotype), behavioral predispositions, and genetic health, and these markers don’t change as a whole as a dog ages.
However, Embark is actually paving the way for using other DNA patterns to help clue us in to a dog’s age using genetic samples. While it’s in “early access” (ie; not available to everyone quite yet) as of the writing of this article, Embark is starting to roll out their dog age test, which uses DNA methylation (a biological process which alters the activity of a DNA segment without modifying the sequence) to identify age.
This lets Embark determine the chronological time that has passed between birth and the time of taking the sample. Embark claims that this test is very accurate, providing an age for your dog give or take only five months.
However, while you wait for that test to go live, there are other ways to get an idea of how old your dog is. A dog’s teeth is one example; teeth change and wear down over time and also develop tartar, so if you need to get a gauge for your dog’s general age, your veterinarian can help you estimate your dog’s age.
Other signs that can help you deduce your dog’s age are joint health, coat coloring (especially around the face), and sometimes temperament. None of these are as accurate as Embark’s dog age DNA test, but they can help give you an idea of what life stage your dog is in.
Using a Dog DNA Test to Determine Color
One thing that always stood out to me about Milo was his coat. Milo’s coat has gone through a lot of changes since he came in to live with me, which largely happened after introducing a change in diet (namely, a higher-protein diet).
I write more about the physical changes Milo went under after switching from one popular kibble to Ketona Chicken Recipe in my article, We Tried Ketona Dog Food for 30 Days.
Watching these changes happen after a change in diet was awesome to see, but it also made me think a lot about the role that genetics and environment play together. Since then, Milo’s coat has gotten thicker, darker, and started growing slightly longer.
Embark tested Milo’s sample and came back with some interesting insights regarding what the genetics portion has to say about his coat type and coloring.
Embark described Milo to a T.
What really stood out to me was the accuracy Embark had with determining Milo’s unique coloring. Embark predicted “mostly solid black or brown fur coat” with “likely to have some white areas in coat.”
Milo really did darken up after getting a diet that supported his coat health better by providing an adequate amount of protein. He also has these charming little patches of white on his toes and his chest.
Using a Dog DNA Test with Health
For me, there are really two main reasons to get a dog DNA test: health, and curiosity. Seeing how Embark determined my dog’s breed was very interesting and satisfied many curiosities I’d come up with since he came to live with me. However, to me the most important thing was understanding Milo’s genetic health so I could have a good idea of what to expect as he gets older.
After sending in Milo’s cheek swab sample and waiting the appropriate amount of time, I received Milo’s health results ahead of his breed and other results.
To my delight, Milo came back with a clean bill of health. Embark scanned for 10 main genetic variants that mark specific genetic conditions common in dogs within his breed makeup, and also covered 209 other variants.
It seems that, with half of his bloodline coming from a long line of healthy and well-bred dobermans, Milo inherited the genetic health of dogs coming from reputable breeders.
I am even a bit suspicious, after receiving his health results, that Milo was perhaps from a litter of purpose-bred sport mixes (doberman x bully breed mix). I have nothing to prove my suspicion, but based on his athleticism, temperament, and health I could certainly see that being the case.
Either way, we certainly got lucky to come back with such great health results for Milo the mystery dog.
Can a Dog DNA Test be Wrong?
In another article, I compared two dog DNA tests on a different one of my personal dogs, Grimm. In that experiment, I used both an Embark Breed ID + Health (the same one I use for Milo in this article) and a breed test from Wisdom Panel to decide if dog dna tests are legitimate, and which one performs better.
I found that the tests provided similar results, but that Embark came back with different breed makeup ratios and one additional breed that Wisdom Panel could not detect. It is admittedly impossible to tell which of the two is more accurate for Grimm, because I do not have Grimm’s verified lineage to compare against the test (I got him at a shelter many years ago).
That said, my experiment did show that dog DNA tests can in fact be incorrect, or at least have varying degrees of accuracy among them and for different dogs. At the end of that experiment, I came away having more trust of reliability in Embark over Wisdom Panel due to the extra breed detected as well as the way the breed ratios related to Grimm’s actual appearance and behavior.
You can read more about that experiment comparing Wisdom Panel and Embark here.
For Milo, as well, I definitely feel like the Embark dog DNA test is reliable for detecting both breed and health. Embark came back with entirely believable and expected results based on Milo’s temperament and appearance. It was all just a little too specific to not be considered accurate or reliable.
I will say, though, allow a buffer in your expectations when it comes to dog DNA tests in general. Embark, for instance, has been around for a long time, and has a lot of happy customers (myself included). But I think there is always going to be a degree of error. If you’re looking for a really reliable and legitimate dog dna test, my recommendation based on my experiences is definitely Embark.
