Testing Your Dog
Thank you for choosing to test your English Shepherd!
To get a special discount on testing kits, use the link below to email Embark; in your email, request the “English Shepherd Breed Conservancy’s price” and specify the number of kits you want to purchase. Embark will email you a link for your purchase with the best price available (regularly $10 off each kit, plus any additional sale pricing).
If you have any questions or need help with funding, let us know.
What Your Test Will Include:
- Breed identification
- Ancestry, including maternal and paternal haplotypes
- Information on over 160 health conditions, including all the genetic tests currently recommended for English Shepherds
- Trait information including coat color genetics, other coat traits, body features, body size, performance, coefficient of inbreeding (COI) and genetic diversity
- A health report that you can share with your veterinarian
- Ability to submit results to OFA
- For more information on the test, please visit the Embark website
For Breeders:
Once your dog’s data has been added to the English Shepherd genetic database, you will have the ability to compare prospective breedings by looking at the expected level of inbreeding expected, comparing status of prospective mates on all of the health conditions tested, and more. Additional tools are under development for breeders. Here are some examples of the type of analysis possible; these examples are drawn from work being done by another Embark research partner, the Doberman Diversity Project.
The chart below is an example of how information on dogs being considered for breeding might be used by breeders:
Another Matchmaker Tool
The chart to the right provides a visual representation of how the chromosomes of two prospective breeding dogs compare; the orange areas reflect locations across the two dogs’ chromosomes where they share one strand of DNA, the red areas are where both strands of DNA are the same.
