I forgot to ask, will a black lab ever have a white chest patch like he does?
I’m pretty happy with him, but am thinking about doing a DNA test just to satisfy my curiosity. Has anyone here ever done one of those? Was it worth it?
Good luck, looks like a great pup (most are, with proper training and socialization).
As for the DNA test, they're getting better it seems. The more data that is collected from purebred family groups.
You will have issues like this though:
[quoteOn the other hand, some breed combinations truly result in dogs that resemble other breeds entirely. Hughes recalled a case of a dog that looked like a black Labrador retriever that tested as a golden retriever mix, which made sense to her as a geneticist.
“You can lose that longer coat in one generation,” she explained. “Goldens carry a black gene. They don’t express it in their coat because the yellow gene blocks all black. They do express it in their nose, eye rims and the pads of their feet. But the golden is recessive. So if you breed a golden retriever to a dog that doesn’t have the genes for yellow and long hair, you’re likely to have a black dog with a short coat.”
In a similar vein, test results suggesting pairings of large with small dogs may raise doubts but such combinations aren’t impossible, Hughes said. She explained: “The larger female will lie down” for the mating.[/quote]
That quote was from this article, (2012). Some of the other ones I found seem to say "buyer beware". But they at least can give you an idea sometimes.
Given the above info, your dog may be more golden retriever than lab if her parents were mixed and the yellow gene was sent back to the recessive side.
I tend to agree with the person above, you've got a nice American mixed breed funloving, rabbit chaser there (mutt, like me)
Geno
