Sexton C L, Reichel C, Keyser A, Dunbar M D, Ruple A
Department of Population Health Sciences, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2025 Aug 20;15(1):30493. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-15095-5.
Breed is a ubiquitous classifier for both companion and working dogs, with profound implications for perceived and/or anticipated behavior, cognition, physiology, athleticism, and "temperament". Owners, breeders, shelters and others are frequently asked to report on the known or suspected breed(s) of their dogs in various scenarios affecting dog and human wellbeing. However, there is a paucity of research on breed reporting accuracy. Using Dog Aging Project data, we compare genetic breed results with owner-reported ancestry for 5673 dogs. We find that 80% of dog owners identified their dog's breed as matching the genetic reports. Among those few who reported disagreement with the genetic results, the majority indicated having dogs belonging to a breed not included in the reference panel. Additional causes for the 6% of samples reported as disagreeable include a stricter owner definition of match for single-breed dogs (e.g. 99.9% vs 100%) and genetic results showing a mix of two closely-related breeds for an owner-reported single-breed dog. Our findings indicate that people are usually aware of their dog's genetic ancestry, which is important for the validity of using breed as a covariate in population-level studies, and for managing life history outcomes for dogs relative to breed-related traits and biases.
品种是伴侣犬和工作犬中普遍存在的分类方式，对感知到的和/或预期的行为、认知、生理、运动能力以及“性情”有着深远影响。在影响犬类和人类福祉的各种情况下，主人、繁殖者、收容所及其他相关方经常被要求报告其犬只已知或疑似的品种。然而，关于品种报告准确性的研究却很匮乏。利用犬类衰老项目的数据，我们对5673只犬的基因品种结果与主人报告的血统进行了比较。我们发现，80%的犬主认为他们的犬种与基因报告相符。在少数报告与基因结果不一致的人中，大多数表示他们的犬属于参考面板中未包含的品种。报告为不一致的6%的样本的其他原因包括，主人对单一品种犬匹配度的定义更为严格（例如99.9%对100%），以及基因结果显示主人报告为单一品种的犬实际上是两个密切相关品种的混合。我们的研究结果表明，人们通常了解其犬的基因血统，这对于在群体水平研究中使用品种作为协变量的有效性，以及针对与品种相关的特征和偏差管理犬的生活史结果而言都很重要。
