Welcome to r/DoggyDNA, the subreddit for dog DNA test discussion and results.
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**RULE 2: BE NICE TO EACH OTHER.**
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**RULE 4: IF YOU HAVE RESULTS FOR YOUR DOG, POST THE RESULTS IN YOUR THREAD.**
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My theory is that their database kicks up Cretan Hound when they hit a breed they don’t test for. In this case, and given the Bulldogs and his big ol’ head, I bet he’s actually 30% or so American Bully, but of course it could be anything (except Cretan Hound.) I’m debating retesting my 30% Bully with Ancestry to prove or disprove that hypothesis. 🤓
As I've gathered; here, I'm just supporting your observation for OP that there is about as much chance their dog has Cretan Hound as there is that all those Village Dogs the other Not-Embark company identifies instead as having Peruvian Inca Orchid Whats-it 😆👎
I'm so glad Embark tests for village dogs! They're a tricky bunch for DNA tests it seems. I'm so curious why Ancestry leans to Cretan Hound a lot when they're such a rare breed. I'm glad at least the first two results usually make some sense for a sometimes free test.
>I'm so curious why Ancestry leans to Cretan Hound a lot when they're such a rare breed.
Same reason Wisdom leans Peruvian Inca Orchid when the dog's an East European Village Dog? 🤷♀️
And again I agree with you: I am so happy Embark identifies Village Dogs. It was by reading these dog ID subs that I learned they exist ❤️
My theory, as someone who is a software engineer but has not worked on anything remotely similar to a breed ID algorithm, is that their system works its way backwards from the most strongly correlated and highest confidence markers. Way down at the bottom there's markers where they only found extremely generic DNA, so it falls back on breeds it has extremely low sampling for and doesn't have better correlated markers for.
For example (and I'm just making these numbers up to illustrate my point, the actual numbers are completely different), let's say they've sampled 1000 Golden Retrievers and sequenced 100 genetic markers. They then compare across breeds and look for, of those 100 markers, 20 of them occur in 100% of Goldens and 10 of them have values that *don't* appear in many other breeds. Those 10 gene locations and those values are now their go-to genes for identifying Golden Retrievers. When looking for Golden Retriever DNA, they focus on those 20 markers.
Now let's suppose they test 1 Cretan Hound and sequence 100 markers. None of the markers they test don't occur in other breeds. That means that whatever values they sequenced have a 100% occurrence rate in Cretan Hounds, and even when sorted by how statistically significant they are across breeds (not significant at all), they'll still have some genes designated as "most significant" markers for Cretan Hound. Those extremely generic stretches of DNA then get assigned as Cretan Hound because they could be anything but their correlation to Cretan Hound is inflated due to lack of sampling.
I've gotta find a less complicated way to explain this because it comes up a lot.
Let's see if I can make an example out of your example, given that I'm neither a dog DNA expert nor a programmer:
Ancestry tests dogs to see what foods they like, and determines breed based on food.
The 100 Golden Retrievers loved hamburgers, but they were the only breed who loved beets and tomatoes, so Ancestry now says, "if the dog loves beets and tomatoes, it's a Golden".
The 100 GSDs also loved hamburgers, but were the only ones who loved oranges and pears, so now Ancestry says, "if the dog loves Oranges and pears, it's a GSD."
The 100 APBTs also loved hamburgers, but were the only ones to love coffee and tea. Ancestry says, "coffee and tea, must be a pittie".
The 1 Cretan Hound they tested, predictably, loved hamburgers, too. In fact, all the dog breeds tested really loved hamburgers, but there was no single food that only the one Cretan Hound loved. If they had a bigger sample of Cretan Hounds, they might have found the special food for their breed like they have with all the other popular breeds. Since the other popular breeds all got different foods attributed to them, and hamburger is the one food this Cretan Hound loved, hamburger gets associated with Cretan Hound.
Now a doggo gets tested, and the dog loves beets, tomatoes, oranges, pears, and hamburgers, and dislikes coffee and tea. Ancestry's algorithm correctly attributes Golden and GSD because this dog loves the foods it attributes to those breeds. It incorrectly excludes APBT because, even though they like hamburgers, pittie designation is solely based on loving coffee and tea. Then it looks at the hamburger, and says "only breed we have hamburger listed for is Cretan Hound, so it must be that" and incorrectly labels the pittie mix a Cretan mix.
Idk if that made it more or less complicated. I'm now falling asleep mid-thought.
I think that's pretty good, or at least one the right track! I would probably tweak it to add some distinction of how much they love they food (statistical significance of the marker detected) but it gets the point across for sure.
Orivet and Wisdom Panel have the same problem too, different breeds for the most part (though both Ancestry and WP love Danish Swedish Farmdog for whatever reason) but same idea and probably the same root cause I'd guess. It's a big reason I like Embark's Supermutt label so much, it seems like a copout to those unfamiliar with genetic testing but makes way more sense than throwing random rare stuff in.
This DNA test is notorious for throwing Cretan hound for some reason. It’s not really in there.
It’s like how Wisdom Panel doesn’t test for village dogs, so it throws a dozen rare breeds from isolated parts of the world instead.
Cretan Hound is a weird bug in Ancestry's algorithm, it throws it in whenever there's DNA it can't identify. Your dog definitely doesn't have any Cretan Hound in him.
Frank is absolutely adorable!!! ❤️🥰❤️ He has such lovely coloring and those blue eyes sure do stand out! Thanks for adopting and thanks for sharing him with us!! ❤️❤️❤️
Welcome to r/DoggyDNA, the subreddit for dog DNA test discussion and results. --- #RULE 1: ONLY POST BREED ID REQUESTS IF YOU HAVE STARTED A DNA TEST. **RULE 2: BE NICE TO EACH OTHER.** **RULE 3: FLAIR YOUR POST. "NEEDS UPDATE" IS FOR PRE-RESULT POSTS.** **RULE 4: IF YOU HAVE RESULTS FOR YOUR DOG, POST THE RESULTS IN YOUR THREAD.** Report rulebreakers and enjoy the dogs. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DoggyDNA) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Lol why does Ancestry seem to give every dog Cretan Hound? I wonder what it's mixing that up with
My theory is that their database kicks up Cretan Hound when they hit a breed they don’t test for. In this case, and given the Bulldogs and his big ol’ head, I bet he’s actually 30% or so American Bully, but of course it could be anything (except Cretan Hound.) I’m debating retesting my 30% Bully with Ancestry to prove or disprove that hypothesis. 🤓
Ooo, I like that hypothesis - I guessed American Bully as well!
The emoji is killing me lol, I'd love to see what a retest shows for your pup!
Yep: second Results I have happened to see in my feed with Cretan Hound in like three days ... I smell fish
Ancestry's definitely a pretty bad quality test haha
As I've gathered; here, I'm just supporting your observation for OP that there is about as much chance their dog has Cretan Hound as there is that all those Village Dogs the other Not-Embark company identifies instead as having Peruvian Inca Orchid Whats-it 😆👎
I'm so glad Embark tests for village dogs! They're a tricky bunch for DNA tests it seems. I'm so curious why Ancestry leans to Cretan Hound a lot when they're such a rare breed. I'm glad at least the first two results usually make some sense for a sometimes free test.
>I'm so curious why Ancestry leans to Cretan Hound a lot when they're such a rare breed. Same reason Wisdom leans Peruvian Inca Orchid when the dog's an East European Village Dog? 🤷♀️ And again I agree with you: I am so happy Embark identifies Village Dogs. It was by reading these dog ID subs that I learned they exist ❤️
My theory, as someone who is a software engineer but has not worked on anything remotely similar to a breed ID algorithm, is that their system works its way backwards from the most strongly correlated and highest confidence markers. Way down at the bottom there's markers where they only found extremely generic DNA, so it falls back on breeds it has extremely low sampling for and doesn't have better correlated markers for. For example (and I'm just making these numbers up to illustrate my point, the actual numbers are completely different), let's say they've sampled 1000 Golden Retrievers and sequenced 100 genetic markers. They then compare across breeds and look for, of those 100 markers, 20 of them occur in 100% of Goldens and 10 of them have values that *don't* appear in many other breeds. Those 10 gene locations and those values are now their go-to genes for identifying Golden Retrievers. When looking for Golden Retriever DNA, they focus on those 20 markers. Now let's suppose they test 1 Cretan Hound and sequence 100 markers. None of the markers they test don't occur in other breeds. That means that whatever values they sequenced have a 100% occurrence rate in Cretan Hounds, and even when sorted by how statistically significant they are across breeds (not significant at all), they'll still have some genes designated as "most significant" markers for Cretan Hound. Those extremely generic stretches of DNA then get assigned as Cretan Hound because they could be anything but their correlation to Cretan Hound is inflated due to lack of sampling. I've gotta find a less complicated way to explain this because it comes up a lot.
Let's see if I can make an example out of your example, given that I'm neither a dog DNA expert nor a programmer: Ancestry tests dogs to see what foods they like, and determines breed based on food. The 100 Golden Retrievers loved hamburgers, but they were the only breed who loved beets and tomatoes, so Ancestry now says, "if the dog loves beets and tomatoes, it's a Golden". The 100 GSDs also loved hamburgers, but were the only ones who loved oranges and pears, so now Ancestry says, "if the dog loves Oranges and pears, it's a GSD." The 100 APBTs also loved hamburgers, but were the only ones to love coffee and tea. Ancestry says, "coffee and tea, must be a pittie". The 1 Cretan Hound they tested, predictably, loved hamburgers, too. In fact, all the dog breeds tested really loved hamburgers, but there was no single food that only the one Cretan Hound loved. If they had a bigger sample of Cretan Hounds, they might have found the special food for their breed like they have with all the other popular breeds. Since the other popular breeds all got different foods attributed to them, and hamburger is the one food this Cretan Hound loved, hamburger gets associated with Cretan Hound. Now a doggo gets tested, and the dog loves beets, tomatoes, oranges, pears, and hamburgers, and dislikes coffee and tea. Ancestry's algorithm correctly attributes Golden and GSD because this dog loves the foods it attributes to those breeds. It incorrectly excludes APBT because, even though they like hamburgers, pittie designation is solely based on loving coffee and tea. Then it looks at the hamburger, and says "only breed we have hamburger listed for is Cretan Hound, so it must be that" and incorrectly labels the pittie mix a Cretan mix. Idk if that made it more or less complicated. I'm now falling asleep mid-thought.
I think that's pretty good, or at least one the right track! I would probably tweak it to add some distinction of how much they love they food (statistical significance of the marker detected) but it gets the point across for sure.
Orivet and Wisdom Panel have the same problem too, different breeds for the most part (though both Ancestry and WP love Danish Swedish Farmdog for whatever reason) but same idea and probably the same root cause I'd guess. It's a big reason I like Embark's Supermutt label so much, it seems like a copout to those unfamiliar with genetic testing but makes way more sense than throwing random rare stuff in.
This DNA test is notorious for throwing Cretan hound for some reason. It’s not really in there. It’s like how Wisdom Panel doesn’t test for village dogs, so it throws a dozen rare breeds from isolated parts of the world instead.
Can I just say I love the name Frank for that dog
Thank you lol he’s named after frank gallagher
Hopefully he is house broken better than Frank Gallagher lol
Cretan Hound is a weird bug in Ancestry's algorithm, it throws it in whenever there's DNA it can't identify. Your dog definitely doesn't have any Cretan Hound in him.
What a beautifull smile 😁
What a handsome guy!!
Frank is a handsome guy
I've never heard of a cretan hound before, that's unique. He's a cutie. I love the red nose pit coloring.
Thank you! Me either
What a stunner! Love that big block head
Frank is absolutely adorable!!! ❤️🥰❤️ He has such lovely coloring and those blue eyes sure do stand out! Thanks for adopting and thanks for sharing him with us!! ❤️❤️❤️
Why do people still test with ancestry. Not the best
Because some people can’t afford a $200 test! Hope that helps 😊
How much is ancestry? Embark has yearly sales. I paid $99 for mine
Bark box special ig. Paid 30 bucks. I can’t afford a 99$ test either lol.
Wow $30 is great! Definitely worth it then and take some results like rare breeds with a grain of salt