DNA Testing for Dogs! What a brilliant idea.

About 6 months ago I took in a lovely dog from Heathlands Animal Sanctuary in Royston. I wasn’t looking to have any more dogs as I was quite happy with my two King Charles Spaniels, but when I went onto the Heathlands website and saw the plight of some of these rescued dogs brought over from an awful existence in Ireland I had to have a look – and there she was! Within two days Ciara was home with us and getting to know Molly and Meka and thankfully all are great friends.

She was quite thin and traumatised. After only 2 days she managed to scale the 5ft garden wall, and was seen by my Grandson weaving in and out of traffic on a busy main road. We now have trellis on top of the wall. She then started to dig her way under the wall, so have now had the garden paved! She was quite a scavenger and opened Christmas presents which were high up on a sideboard – eating a whole box of Tesco Finest Dark Belgium chocolates – quick visit to the vets. Several weeks later she climbed into a cupboard in the conservatory and managed to open a tin of rat poison – another visit to the vets! She was quite destructive when I left her in the house and never knew what to expect on my return. She chases anything that moves, but that is improving slowly having been given some good advice from the dog training class that we now attend.

When my sister told me she was thinking of having her recently rescued dog tested, I couldn’t wait to have mine done and beat her to it! Although both our dogs were rescued 6 months apart and both from different rescue centres, they had both come over from Ireland. They looked so alike (although mine was only 16 months old and my sisters 4 years old) we had convinced ourselves that they were related as my sister’s dog had had puppies at some stage in her life!

But when the results arrived how wrong we were – there was no DNA resemblance at all! My dog Ciara (who we thought was a Beagle cross,) is Border Collie x American Staffordshire Terrier x Dachshund and Millie is Labrador Retriever x Beagle x English Springer Spaniel x Lhapa Apso x Yorkie!

Ciara is one of the nicest dogs I have ever had (and I have had quite a few)!

 

Sue Charlton