ArticlePloS one2018
A canine identity crisis: Genetic breed heritage testing of shelter dogs.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluation of Two Commercial DNA-Based Breed Identification Tests for Pit Bull-Type Dogs in Taiwan: A Pilot Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- An interpretable machine learning framework for dog breed inference and ancestry decomposition.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Comparing owner reported and genetic breed identification reveals high concordance in a large cohort from the Dog Aging Project.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- How Changing Portraits and Opinions of "Pit Bulls" Undermined Breed-Specific Legislation in the United States.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Modern pedigree dogs in the United Kingdom Kennel Club: a journey through shifting population landscapes and demography.Companion animal health and genetics · 2025Article
- The role of breed and personality descriptions in influencing perceptions of shelter dog adoptability.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Article
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- Sensor-supported measurement of adaptability of dogs (Canis familiaris) to a shelter environment: Nocturnal activity and behavior.PloS one · 2023Article
- Shelter dog behavior after adoption: Using the C-BARQ to track dog behavior changes through the first six months after adoption.PloS one · 2023Article
- Predictors of successful diversion of cats and dogs away from animal shelter intake: Analysis of data from a self-rehoming website.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2023Article
- A Study Evaluating Consumer Motivations, Perceptions, and Responses to Direct-to-Consumer Canine Genetic Test Results.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- US Adults' Perceptions of Dog Breed Bans, Dog Aggression and Breed-Specific Laws.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Evaluation of hair cortisol as an indicator of long-term stress responses in dogs in an animal shelter and after subsequent adoption.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Case Distribution, Sources, and Breeds of Dogs Presenting to a Veterinary Behavior Clinic in the United States from 1997 to 2017.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Genetic testing of dogs predicts problem behaviors in clinical and nonclinical samples.BMC genomics · 2022Article
- Critical Problems for Research in Animal Sheltering, a Conceptual Analysis.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Review
- Exploratory content analysis of direct-to-consumer pet genomics: What is being marketed and what are consumers saying?PloS one · 2022Article
- "International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Characteristics and Welfare of Long-Term Shelter Dogs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Previous research in animal shelters has determined the breeds of dogs living in shelters by their visual appearance; however the genetic breed testing of such dogs is seldom conducted, and few studies have compared the breed labels assigned by shelter staff to the results of this testing. In the largest sampling of shelter dogs' breed identities to-date, 459 dogs at Arizona Animal Welfare League & SPCA (AAWL) in Phoenix, Arizona, and 460 dogs at San Diego Humane Society & SPCA (SDHS) in San Diego, California, were genetically tested using a commercially available product to determine their breed heritage. In our sample, genetic analyses identified 125 distinct breeds with 91 breeds present at both shelters, and 4.9% of the dogs identified as purebreds. The three most common breed signatures, in order of prevalence, American Staffordshire Terrier, Chihuahua, and Poodle, accounted for 42.5% or all breed identifications at the great grandparent level. During their stay at the shelter, dogs with pit bull-type ancestries waited longer to be adopted than other dogs. When we compared shelter breed assignment as determined by visual appearance to that of genetic testing, staff at SDHS was able to successfully match at least one breed in the genetic heritage of 67.7% of dogs tested; however their agreement fell to 10.4% when asked to identify more than one breed. Lastly, we found that as the number of pit bull-type relatives in a dog's heritage increased, so did the shelter's ability to match the results of DNA analysis. In total when we consider the complexity of shelter dog breed heritage and the failure to identify multiple breeds based on visual identification coupled with our inability to predict how these breeds then interact within an individual dog, we believe that focusing resources on communicating the physical and behavioral characteristics of shelter dogs would best support adoption efforts.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.