What we can — and can’t — learn from our pets’ DNA

Sweetie, for example, has good doggie friends — but she’s not very good at making new ones. “It could be attributed to her American Staffordshire terrier or German shepherd ancestry,” Gunter says. When Sweetie loves someone, though, she is a real cuddle bug. Gunter thinks that could be due to those first two breeds. Or maybe it’s due to her Chesapeake Bay retriever or rottweiler traits. “You could tell a pretty compelling story with any of the breeds in her heritage,” she notes.

Scientists don’t yet know precisely how the behaviors of different breeds combine in a dog, Gunter points out. “Genetic influences of multiple breeds do not combine like dabs of differently colored paints or dashes of our favorite attributes,” she says. “I’m uncertain how informative it is to know the breed heritage of your mixed breed dog if we don't know how multiple breeds affect behavior.” Maybe it’s better, she says, to just take your dog’s behaviors and work with them.