Meet Belle

[BellesMom]

Hello Everyone!

We adopted our little Belle last year as a companion for our other dog. She was a stray so we had very little information on her when we got her from the shelter. They had her listed as a Dachsund mix based on her appearance which is rather long body with very short legs. I have been dying to know what her breed mix is so I got a DNA test for her. She looks like a mix of just about everything so I was worried that they wouldn't find much and she would come back a mutt.

Well imagine my surprise when we received the results......75-100% Cocker Spaniel ! No other breeds listed. I had an idea she might have some spaniel, what drew me to her originally was that she reminded me of my tri colored cavalier that I had growing up. But i thought she would be perhaps a small percent.

She has NO long hair on her what so ever. Totally a short coat. Ever other cocker spaniel even mix I have seen has at least some long wavy hair on their ears. She is very short haired but very soft!! My husband thinks the DNA test is wrong and that we can't go around telling people she is a Cocker Spaniel.

So I am wondering, is she perhaps the result of some backyard breeding gone horribly wrong? Inbred? mutant? Is there some recessive gene for short hair in Cocker Spaniels? I have never heard of such a thing. I know DNA works in strange ways but the fact that she is more than 50% one breed and 0% anything else left feeling more puzzled. So I thought here would be a good place to start. Have a look and let me know what you guys think!

Thanks!

 

[manuel]

Welcome. That is interesting. She does remind me of a cocker in some pictures. She does look Dachsund lying on the towel. Is that a puppy pic?

 

[Polly]

She is a darling! But I don't see any cocker in her, I see beagle. I think your husband is right, maybe you should demand they do the test over.

 

[karenwalksthedogs]

I would also say no cocker except that our neighbor adopted a puppy from a litter where the mother was 100% springer spaniel and the father was unknown. The neighbor’s dog had no absolutely coat. Now I know a springer doesn’t have as much coat as a cocker but I still would have expected some so I wouldn’t say your pup absolutely has no cocker in it.

The thing with these tests, I wonder how they can absolutely narrow it down to cocker spaniel. I mean it wasn’t so long ago that ACS, ECS, and SS were mixed in together. At one point the larger puppies in a litter were Springers and the smaller ones were cockers. As a matter of fact spaniels themselves were a pretty mixed lot genetically speaking until about 100years ago or so. In human genetic tests in some cases they can only list some as Northern European or Southern European because the gene pool is so mixed there’s no way to separate it any further so I’m kind of wondering how they can do it for dogs.

I think there’s a good chance there’s some spaniel in there, maybe quite a bit. I think she’s got the eyes and the picture with the hoop sure looks spaniel to me. I guess the thing with those tests is that a couple of generations of mixed breed dogs with some spaniel in them could have combined to form your pup. Even though they might be predominantly spaniel other characteristics from the other breeds could be dominate, like the short coat gene.

Whatever she is, she sure is cute!