If knowing the breed of a pet is complicated, as we mentioned in How to Know What Breed My Dog Is, if the dog is a mixed-breed, the difficulty has reached the level of aerospace engineering.
People are not usually detailed in finding out either, especially if they try to do so based on physical traits.
“I have a black mongrel dog, what breeds could it be?”
The most common colors in dog coats are black, brown, and white. Unless it has an unusual pattern, your dog’s coat won’t be very revealing.
“Well, but it’s a big mongrel dog.”
With that information, you might have the Hound of the Baskervilles, and it’s a mix of English Mastiff and Bloodhound. In the very likely case that you don’t share your dog with the Conan Doyle book, a description of the dog can narrow down the possibilities but won’t guarantee anything.
Focusing on behavior won’t solve the problem either. We also discussed this in another previous article, Behavior and Genes, more extensively.
To summarize, recent studies consider that the influence of breed on an animal’s behavior has been overestimated, especially in modern breeds (recent breeds that have emerged since 1800).
Distinguishing the Definitions of Mixed-Breed Dogs
Defining a mixed-breed dog in general terms is simple, like most definitions, as long as you don’t dig too deep, like most things.
A mixed-breed dog is one that does not belong to any officially recognized breed but comes from two or more breeds. But who decides the breeds used in this distinction?
The Basque Shepherd Dog is a breed of dog with records dating back to the 16th century, and it was recognized by the Royal Canine Society of Spain in 1996 and by the Spanish government itself in 2001.
However, neither the International Cynological Federation nor the American Kennel Club, among others, have this breed registered in their lists.
Undoubtedly, the Basque Shepherd Dog is a distinct breed and not a mixed-breed, but it helps to understand that some individuals can be in a particular limbo. Breeds recognized by some associations, but not all.
Another topic is hybrid dogs.
Hybrid dogs are those that come from two different pure breeds, with characteristics of both. The result is not an official breed, like the cockapoo, and they are considered by many to be mixed-breed dogs, as the term includes dogs that come from intentional crosses.
However, many breeders refuse to call them mixed-breeds, believing that the term is derogatory to the time and effort invested in these selective crosses. That’s why they insist on the name hybrid dogs.
Additionally, they could be recognized as official breeds in the future.
New dog breeds are continually accepted as official. For example, in early 2024, the news broke that the AKC had accepted the Lancashire Heeler as its 201st registered breed for dog shows.
Therefore, if you’re not going to compete, it’s best not to complicate things with a dog’s breed purity.
And what if I want to know their breed for some reason?
Even outside of competitions, you might want to know their breeds to try to estimate how long they will live. It is true that, on average, mixed-breed and mongrel dogs live longer than purebred dogs, but it really depends on the breed we are comparing them with.
The most reliable method, unless you have the animal’s genealogy registered, is a dog breed DNA test. This is especially true for dogs that are a mix of many breeds.
The more breeds a dog has, the more complicated it is for its physical or behavioral traits to reflect its breeds. You have a good set of traits interacting with each other.
And even genetics, usually so reliable, faces difficult barriers here.
Some breeds are recognized and official, but the number of individuals is minimal. Chinook is a dog breed with approximately 1200 members, mostly in North America.
The problem with atypical breeds is that the databases have few samples to study and record those genetic variants that allow them to be differentiated from others.
In these cases, breeders usually have exhaustive control of the individuals in the population, and it is rare for there to be mixed breeds from these breeds.
Another stumbling block is very similar breeds. We do not mean that they are the same size, have the same hair color, or bark in the same key.
We mean that genetically they have a high similarity because they are recent breeds that come from the same ancestor.
Imagine you have the Jack Russell Terrier. Then, one fine day, a reverend living in the UK, passionate about breeding terriers, manages to develop a variant called the Parson Russell Terrier, which is later accepted as a breed.
Two breeds, one being the base of the other, whose differences are that the Jack Russell is somewhat smaller and has shorter legs.
And now imagine the poor geneticist, with tired eyes, who has to find the genetic variants that allow them to distinguish both breeds in a mixed-breed dog.
The methodological part is not perfect either. A genetic test, whether for dogs, humans, or elephants, does not have 100% reliability. There are errors that can be made, from human to mechanical.
That is why sometimes the results given for the same mixed-breed animal by two genetic companies differ in some percentages, especially if the two previous points are met.
Most canine genetic companies, in the section of discerning the breeds of an animal, usually place their reliability between 97% and 99%. They will never tell you 100%, and if they do, you can be 100% sure they are lying to you.
There was an experiment in 2023 where the same samples were sent to four different dog DNA test companies, and the results were compared.
Two cases were simple, a sample of a purebred Great Dane and a human one. Two companies correctly identified one sample as a pure Great Dane and dismissed the other as human. A third correctly identified the Great Dane but added a small percentage of a second breed and confused the human sample with a dog sample. The fourth company was generally terrible.
But in the cases of two mixed-breed dog samples, none of the companies agreed on their results with the others, not even the two that correctly assigned the Great Dane and the human.
Unfortunately, no company can guarantee the breeds of your mixed-breed dog with total certainty. But we can guarantee you the best possible result, at the best price, and help you in every way possible.
In the end, the important thing is that it is a dog that loves you and that you love.