We’ve been curious about the ancestry of our dog, Reno, so Kindra ordered a doggy DNA kit a few weeks ago.
First, who among us knew that doggy DNA tests were a thing?
Not me. But the company that did Reno’s test says it has done more than three million tests, so it certainly qualifies as a thing.
Kindra’s test arrived a couple of weeks ago and she promptly swabbed the inside of Reno’s jaw and sent the test off.
Some background: Reno, you may remember, showed up at our house at the end of February 2022.
He was seven or eight weeks old and had been dumped, apparently.
We couldn’t find his owner, so we decided to let him stay. The vet thought he might be mostly Pyrenees or Anatolian shepherd. I thought he looked like he might have a lot of collie and maybe some German Shepherd, and Aaliyah thought he was mostly husky. Kindra wished he had been a Dachshund.
Turns out Aaliyah wins the prize. The results became available last week and revealed that Reno is 52 percent Siberian husky, which certainly explains his thick fur and bottle brush of a tail.
He is 22 percent Great Pyrenees and, surprisingly to us, 12 percent American Staffordshire Terrier and 11 percent American Pit Bull Terrier. And there is a Chow Chow buried a few generations deep in his ancestry.
That was interesting and explained some things about Reno, like his gait. He springs when he runs and, now, it’s easy to imagine him hitched to a sled and using that running style to cover mile after mile of tundra.
But the most interesting thing was this: they can also match DNA relatives from among the dogs they’ve tested.
Turns out, Reno has a full brother about a year older than he is.
The dog’s name is Luka and he lives in Lower Paxton Township, Pa., which is just east of Harrisburg. He, too, is 52 percent Husky.
I was intrigued. How did Reno’s brother wind up five states away? Did his family move?
The DNA web site allows you to send emails to others who have had their dogs tested, so I sent one off to Luka’s family and explained I was curious how they wound up so far apart.
No reply after four days, so I figure I may not get one.
In the absence of facts, I may be forced to do like cable tv news and create my own narrative.
Maybe one in which Luka is heroic, like swimming an icy, flooded river to save campers on the other side or perhaps alerting authorities that Timmy was trapped in a well.
With such a role model, Reno would surely be motivated to heroism himself.
I’ll consider possible narratives while I wait to see if Luka’s family returns my email.
In the meantime, I was so intrigued by the doggy DNA experience, I ordered tests for Martin and Monroe.