OK, Maybe you all remember my write-up about Amazon Prime Day. It may have escaped you, but somewhere in the list of things important and frivolous that I bought that day was a dog DNA testing kit.

If you are interested, you can buy one too.

I would definitely list this as a frivolous purchase. However, all of life can’t simply be necessity; this would make for a pretty dull existence.

So let’s get down to the brass tacks. Why am I writing today. Pretty easy. I’ve gone through the entire dog DNA testing process, and I am ready to display the results. This was particularly interesting as I could compare it to 23andMe, the human DNA testing service.

The first thing you do after receiving your kit is to collect the sample.

See the swab above? This is after the sample has been taken. To get the sample, you take the swab and jam it into the saliva pouches in your dog’s cheeks. Some dogs react better to this than others!

Dixie wasn’t pleased.

She got over it, though. After the sample has been taken, you stick it into the provided tube and mix it with the preservative fluid in there. This differs with the 23andMe sample process a tad- probably because it would be difficult to get a dog to neatly spit into a tube.

BTW- same as with 23andMe no eating for an hour or so before sampling.

After that’s done, put the sample in the postage-paid envelope. Somewhere around this time be sure to register the sample on the Embark website, then put the sample in the mail and wait.

In my case it took about two weeks. Not long at all.

Here is what I found out.

It turns out that Dixie really is 100% Aussie Cattle Dog- of course, by definition that breed is super mixed, anyway. So purebred Australian mutt? Guess so. It was a surprise that she was purebred- I always had the idea that where we got her from was pretty dodgy.

Guess they were legit, though.

Nice that they gave percentages- although Dixie’s was pure and mine was not. Pretty fascinating stuff.

There was more, though.

There was a family tree.

Then there was a chart showing worldwide where her genes came from. This was accompanied by a description of where her genetic markers were often found, which I thought was interesting in its own right.

23andMe has something similar; for example, my maternal haplogroup was passed down by the Saxons. Dixie got something like that, but for dogs. Pretty cool.

And then another feature similar to 23andMe, but a LOT less fraught.

Dixie’s relatives!

Pretty cool, and as I said a lot less controversial than the human version. Mine ended up snagging me in a minor family dispute, even though that too was a learning experience.

This was a window into who Dixie’s “family” was, and other dogs that shared her traits.

So that was about it. Was it essential? Did it need to be done?

NO.

Was it cool and fun?

YES.

So the choice is really yours, readers, as to whether you want to throw some money away. Personally I would recommend to wait until Black Friday, Prime Day, etc., so you get some money kicked off. But then hit the “buy now” button and give it a whirl.

Geeky fun, right up my alley!