KNOW YOUR GENES?

May I present to you....Axel, the new 4 legged love of my life (not to exclude Riley). The drummer and I have been looking at adopting a new dog for a while now and we finally found him! I was chatting with a fellow co-worker the other day and it came up that she was a foster mom for our city's Humane Society. Well, I hadn't been on (stalking) their website yet so she showed me the link and I immediately spotted him. I emailed the drummer his pics and info (as I frequently do with other dogs...It's almost an illness) and told him that I thought that this was the one! He fell in love as quickly as I did and the next thing you know I'm filling out the online application. Now there was a little mix up with his name and picture at first...(they accidentally put his picture with his brother's name...Ace) But everything was quickly sorted out and we got our little (huge) puppy boy.

So, now that we've gotten him home and we're sharing our good news with family and friends the question of, "what kind of dog is he?" keeps popping up. Well? We don't really know? With Riley it was easy...A Golden Retriever (I got her from a breeder, she's got papers). But since Axel was abandoned on the side of a country road along with his siblings we don't know what breed his parents were. And his adoption paperwork only makes things more confusing...according to those and the website he's a Lab/Saint Bernard/Hound/Shepard mix? So being the proactive (annoyingly curious) mommy that I am, I searched the web for this:

It's a Pet DNA test that you do at home! You just swab the inside of their cheek with the test swab in the kit, put it in the envelope provided and send it off to the lab (no pun intended)(even though I think it's really cute to think there's a Labrador in a lab coat and goggles testing swabs...awwwe). In a few weeks they send you back the results with a cute certificate that tells you exactly who your dog's ancestors are! Pretty cool I think. I can't wait to find out just exactly what breed Axel is. Not only will it make my response to "what kind of dog is it?" a lot more simple, it will also provide us with valuable information about our pet like physical and behavioral traits that are specific to certain breeds. What I can tell for now is that he's going to be a Super Sized Big Boy (his paws are already bigger than my 75 lbs. Golden's). So I'll definitely let you all know what breed(s) Axel is when his test results come in, but in the meantime do you know your pet's breed? Do you know your own Pedigree? Can you guess what my puppy's chemical makeup consists of? Can't wait to see if anyone is right!

Just a Blonde's Take
Bridget