Wisdom Panel Dog DNA Test Kit - Canine Breed Identification and Ancestry Information

I bought 2 of these a couple weeks ago. We have 2 dogs, Hermione and Bender, that we were told upon their respective adoptions were 'designer hybrids'... a jack-chi (jack russell and chihuahua) and a dorgi (corgi and dachshund). We were pretty confident the jack-chi was what we were told she was. She looked just like one! But the Dorgi we were not sure. He has some corgi looking features and is long and thin but I had doubts. A google search for Dorgi produced no animal that looked like our Ben! I've owned the jack-chi for 6 years and ALWAYS wanted to know the truth about what she is. We adopted the dorgi for my husband 3 years ago and he didn't know such a test existed so when I told him about it a few weeks ago, he asked why we hadn't done it already! lol.Anyway, I ordered the tests for $100 for both and they arrived in 3 days. The instructions say that you have to basically quarantine them for a couple hours, not letting them eat or lick anything so the sample is not contaminated and then take a small round q-tip/tooth brush looking thing and rub it around their gums above their teeth for 15 seconds let it dry for 5 minutes and send it back. I read reviews that gave tips on crating them or putting them in a spare bedroom for that quarantine time, ect but I knew our Dorgi would be a problem! He licks evvvverything constantly! I decided that since our dogs sleep with us I would put their tests on my nightstand and do it first thing in the morning so there would be no contamination of samples. They would have 8 hours of not eating drinking or licking a thing! Some reviewers made it seem hard to get an uncontaminated sample and said the lab came back and said it was unusable. I was nervous!Well, I woke up at 3am to the dorgi licking me to go outside. LOL so I decided to go ahead and get the jack-chi sample as she was still adleep at the foot of the bed. I grabbed her swabs and woke her up and started rubbing. She probably didn't appreciate getting woken up like that! I tried to count to 15 as the instructions said but I only got to 5 on the first sample and 7 on the second. I let the dogs out and we all went back to sleep. When I woke up at 6:30am for work, Ben was still asleep so I grabbed his swabs and the same thing happened. He wouldn't tolerate the sample taking for more than 5 seconds! I was sure my samples would not be sufficient! But I had done what I could and I sent them in. That was Tuesday.3 days later (Friday) I got an email saying that they had gotten them and the testing process had started. It said to expect results within 2 weeks. 7 days later, the following Friday around 6pm I checked my email and there were Bender's (dorgi) results. We were astonished! The PDF file was easy to read and had a family tree style diagram to clearly show us Ben's linage. We were astonished! Our dorgi was actually mostly made up of Australian Shepherd and Belgian Tervuren, the later being a breed we'd never even heard of. It had one whole line of ancestry that just said 'mixed breed' and when we scrolled down it said he was lowchen, shaffordshire bull terrier and collie and gave the percentages of each that made up that 'mixed breed' line.All of a sudden when we looked at Bender, we saw a completely different dog! Things made much more sense!! The way he looks, why his eyes are colored the way they are, his personality, ect... it was enlightening!But now I was anxious! Where were Hermione's results? Where was my confirmation telling me what I already knew? That Hermione was a Jack-chi? The next day, nothing came all day. It was the weekend, after all so I figured as much. I was sure I'd get them Monday but it was killing me! But then, as I laid down to go to sleep Saturday night I checked my email one last time on my iphone. There it was. Hermione's results were in. I shot out of bed and ran into the office to tell my husband and we huddled in front of my computer monitor at 11:30pm to open her PDF file. Again, I was shocked. I thought I knew my dog. I have an 'I <3 jack-chi's' tee shirt for crying out loud and the dog on the front of it looks JUST LIKE HERMIONE! But low and behold.... every single parent, grandparent and great grandparent of Hermione was a rat terrier. What I had on my hands was a full blooded rat terrier. At first I was actually disappointed, but Monday during some downtime at work I looked up the rat terrier and again... enlightenment. Everything started to make sense. She does look exactly like a rat terrier and her personality matches right up. The more I learned about this impressive breed the happier I got that I bought this test and found out the truth. I have always known I had an amazing animal on my hands, I mean Hermione single handedly (pawdedly?) turned my husband from a cat person to a dog person, but now here was proof that my dog really is something special :)I also know now what to looks for medically as she ages. The ailments that are common to her breed.So in summery, DNA sample taking turned out to be a snap, from ordering it off amazon to getting my results took 13 and 14 days respectively and I believe the results to be 100% correct. I am extremely pleased with this service and will no doubt purchase it for every single dog I adopt in the future!

I know that phenotypes don't always match genotypes. However, I'm still rather skeptical about the results of my dog's test. She is most definitely some sort of hound mix-- she bays and howls like nobody's business, has a hard hound coat, and an intense toy/prey drive. She's exuberantly friendly, incredibly stubborn, and goes deaf when she's on a scent. As a puppy I thought she might be a Beagle cross, but as she grew older Beagle seemed less likely, based on her size (almost forty pounds) and structure (very tall and lean with skinny legs and a narrow face). I waffled a bit over buying a DNA kit because of the poor reviews, but eventually I caved. The whole process was very simple: swabbed her cheeks after isolating her as per previous reviews for several hours with nothing to lick or chew and then sent the samples in. The results arrived rather quickly, just under two weeks after the sample was received.They indicate she's primarily a mutt, which I expected: only two breeds found in the last three generations. They also say she's 12.5% basset hound, which I definitely can see, in personality if not in stature. However, it's the rest that has me skeptical. The largest breed found in her (25%) is Cocker Spaniel. I just don't really see it in her at all. She doesn't look like a Cocker, and she doesn't act like a Cocker. The rest of the results (the less-than-12.5%) were equally as perplexing: 9% otterhound (one of the rarest breeds in the world!), 8% bullmastiff, and then a variety of wire-haired terriers. All put together, I'm just not sold. Could she be this odd combination of non-hound, very rare breeds? Maybe. But she doesn't look or act like a dog who supposedly only has 12.5% scent-hound in her, excluding otterhound, which again I just don't believe at all given the rarity.I gave it three stars because it is certainly entertaining and fun, and it's easy to do. Had a good laugh at the results. If you have fifty or sixty dollars to spare, go for it. But go into it knowing the results might be a bit suspect. That said, I may go ahead and buy another test for my other dog, if only to see if his results make more sense, or are equally as unexpected. I tested my 'hound' first because she at least sort of resembles some breeds, while I can't even begin to guess with him, other than some kind of terrier. First I'll have to work myself back up to stomaching another sixty dollars, though.UPDATE 08/15/12:I have to reduce this to one star, based solely on my experience when I ultimately did attempt to test my second dog. Note the 'attempt'. Again, I followed all directions. The dog was isolated for several hours with nothing to lick or chew prior to the test. I let the swabs air dry without touching anything before shipping them right off. This time, it took an entire week for the samples to be received at the lab, as opposed to roughly three days for the first test. A little strange, but I shrugged it off.For two complete weeks, the status checker on the website informed me the sample was being processed. Then this past Monday evening (8/13), it changed from being processed to results pending. Okay. Great! When I next checked it, however, it had reverted back to being processed. What? No word for Wisdom Panel on why, and for two days I waited, thinking it would change back. Nope. Finally, a bit confused, I e-mailed them asking what was going on. Their reply? The DNA sample was insufficient and didn't have enough markers, and if I wanted results, I would have to test again. Given that I followed their directions to a 'tee', could it be perhaps that the week the sample spent in the postal system in the dead heat of summer before they supposedly received it had anything to do with this insufficient DNA? I mean, a week seems like a heckuva long time for first class mail, especially when a sample sent not a month prior was received by them in less than three days! But what most rankled me is the fact that they apparently weren't going to tell me anything about this problem with my sample-- at least, not in a timely manner-- even though it seems quite clear that they knew about it on Monday, at the very least. If I hadn't e-mailed them, I feel like they would have just let me sit around for another two or three weeks despite knowing well and good that they couldn't analyze my sample. Not a good way to treat paying customers. Not to mention, when sending me back their form letter, they didn't even bother to fill-in-the-blanks with my dog's name... the e-mail literally read: "It has been brought to my attention that the sample you submitted for (pet name) was unable to be successfully processed..." Really?They offered to either send me a new kit-- no offer to expedite or anything like that, so that would mean another month or so of waiting with no guarantee that THIS sample would be sufficient-- or they said I could seek a refund. But because I bought through Amazon, they wouldn't actually give me the refund themselves. Cue a very nice LiveChat with an Amazon rep in which I was told I could not get a refund because I didn't physically have the product to return... well, long story short, I didn't take no for an answer and did end up with my refund. Go Amazon! But the whole experience has left a bitter taste in my mouth and I will definitely NOT be dealing with WisdomPanel again.