Dog DNA kits?

[violetsareblue11]

So we have two dogs- an English Cocker Spaniel-Springer Spaniel cross (a Sprocker I believe) and what we were told is a Shih Tzu. Both are rescue dogs so we don't have any information on their backgrounds. We don't think our Shih Tzu is in fact a Shih Tzu. We've owned him for a year, and the rescue centre advertised him as a Shih Tzu and we love him to shreds, but are starting to doubt his "pedigree". Several other Shih Tzu owners have commented on his un-Shih Tzu looks and even the vet thought he was another breed! He's large for a Shih Tzu (nearly as large as our normal sized Sprocker!), has tan and white, curly fur (it's straight ATM because we keep it clipped), a slightly squashed Shih Tzu face and underbite (his only Shih Tzu features), quite long legs and a tail that curls upwards and sits on top of his back (think of a husky tail but with more long fur on it). He also has quite a domed head and floppy ears. So to sum up, we're considering getting one of those dog DNA kits to see if we can identify his mystery pedigree. Has anyone had any good/bad experiences with them and can anyone reccommend the best brand to use?

If you've got the cash lying around spare go for it.

Personally I think it's a waste of money, it's not going to change anything so why bother. Get yourself something nice with the money instead.

Those tests are notoriously inaccurate. They've been used before on mongrels dogs whose heritage is known and the results have come back completely wrong. The list of breeds they can supposedly recognise was compiled in the US so quite often dogs tested in the UK will have breeds which don't currently exist in the UK on their results.

They're a bit of expensive fun at best, just don't expect any useful or insightful results.

I've used BlackDog twice, in one case we knew her mother was a springer, the DNA test showed she was a springer dalmatian cross, which made so much sense, she looked like a dalmatian except all brown, did the dalmatian smile etc.
The second one showed she was a springer sheltie cross, when I read about the personalities of shelties a lot of things made sense!
The breed database has about 200 breeds in it, so if your dog is from UK and Europe the test will be accurate, not so much if your dog is from like, Thailand. If both the dogs parents were mixtures of two or three breeds the test will show these at different percentage levels.
It was £60 and we got it because we were very very curious as to what types produced such stunners with wonderful personalities, glad I did it.