This adorable cookies and cream puppy mystery sparked many guesses across our social media. The guesses were as mixed as Delilah’s coat and now the wait is over!
Embark Breed ID Results
Another puppy mystery solved. Delilah’s dominant breed is 38.9% American Pit Bull Terrier followed by 17.3% Pomeranian, 16.2% Australian Cattle Dog and 10.5% Catahoula Leopard Dog (guessed by many). Another popular online breed guess confirmed here is 9.5% German Shepherd Dog. However, very few people guessed the 7.6% Golden Retriever.
If you look holistically at Delilah’s breed mix, there are many herding breeds — Australian Cattle Dog, Catahoula Leopard Dog, and German Shepherd Dog. If you add up the percentages, the result is 36.2% herding breeds, which is almost as much as her dominant breed (American Pit Bull Terrier at 38.8%). Even though Delilah looks like the sweetest blend of many different breeds, her behavior might be more like a terrier/herding breed mix.
One other sneaky breed that creeped past most online guesses was Pomeranian, much like Golden Retriever. Delilah is a great example of how there’s more than meets the eye in dog DNA and a dog’s breed is more than coat deep. Sometimes dogs with long coated breeds in their ancestry like the Pomeranian and Golden Retriever still end up with short coats. This is because long coats are a recessive trait (dogs will only show it if they inherit two copies of the mutation).
Beyond the breed guesses, we know that Delilah’s half and half face is a showstopper. Delilah’s light half is caused by merle. But there can be a genetic mechanism contributing to her split look not related to either merle or white spotting. Split face or whitehead is not uncommon in Border Collies, Australian Shepherds, Panda Shepherds and Smooth Fox Terriers. There’s a group researching the genetic cause of this and it’s powered by our data.
Thanks for Embarking with us. If you aren’t already, be sure to follow @embarkvet on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Youtube.
