Here is why you should get a rescue dog and a genetic test

Linda and I, and Brutus have been socializing our new puppy, Caesar, around the block. He has gone everywhere possible, been trained, encouraged, and has rewarded us with a truly spectacular level of curiosity, his common sense, and his gregarious and always doing, meeting, and trying to love everyone. While he is being friendly, he is also scared shitless of everything.

If you can, get a rescue dog. There is a huge need. But don’t get one if you cant handle it .Never break a dog’s heart by taking her back. Be ready. Have the resources, it can be expensive, but this is a sentinient being like each of us are. Treat them like any decent person would treat another human. Lots more inhumanity to man today in my country than ever, but we can do better.

A big man on a motorcycle with a beard picked up Caesar and let him sit on his lap when he told him about the fear of men Caesar had. It’s now a lot less. It wasn’t his foster dad, whom he loves. 

The three of us have set aside many obligations and made less money by far in order to socialize this guy at this key moment of his puppy life. And he has made it fun.

Here is his story…

Somewhere, in 2024, a German Shepherd found love or at least mating in Redwood Valley with a  German Shepherd/Great Pyrenees Mix. Then on January 22, a litter of puppies was born.  Sadly, they were tossed out along the road in Ukiah. Happily, Ukiah animal control found them and took them to the pound. Nobody wanted these sweet puppies to hang out at the pound. After they were neutered, a very nice man named John, who had 15 dogs, including 7 foster dogs on his ranch, fostered them. We arrived with Brutus, looking for dogs on April 27. We met one of the puppies, Stormy, that day in the Ukiah pound. Stormy really looked like a German shepherd. Brutus, who had been picky and uninterested in some wonderful rottweiler puppies and others too, didn’t care for Stormy. But we did. Come on, big guy!  We know you are social and need more to do!  We thought we could make Brutus come around by looking at other dogs from the pound.  We asked John to hold him for us for a few minutes. They brought out a female who was madly in love with him, jumping on Brutus and slobbering on him, and much too close. Brutus was like NO WAY.  Then Elliot, my heart still goes to Elliot. Wonderful GSD mix fella, Brutus LOVED him, and He loved Brutus, but he was scared to death of me and all men. He had a rough life and was a bit claustrophobic. I wish we could have saved him, but he was just too much work for us at our age. Then we went back inside, and a nice couple had fallen in love with Stormy.  John said he belonged to us. We had made the appt, we had submitted all our background, and he was ours. John also said he had one last puppy at home from the litter.  John asked if we could all come back the next day.  Not so much fun from Fort Bragg but we did. This gave time for the other folks to finish all the paperwork and show their determination. They had lost a GSD recently. Stormy was madly in love with both the other woman and Linda. When we came back, there were Caesar and Stormy. Caesar was the boss of Stormy, being 25 percent bigger roughly. Same litter. He also loved Brutus and surprise!, Brutus liked him a lot. Not loved at that point, but wow, finally, the big guy likes an adoptable dog! I sort of wonder if it was partly because they look alike. Chickens are that way. The brown hen will sometimes reject the white chick, and the white hen will sometimes reject the black chick, even though it’s perfectly natural for chickens to have mutli colored chicks.

Brutus is a 9-year-old, Malinois/German Shepherd who has had 10000x the energy of any dog I’ve ever met in my life. Over the past year, he had gained weight up to 100lbs, started sleeping till noon and being very stiff walking. We gave him supplements. We massaged the big fella. Turned out all he needed was a puppy.

Brutus is like me, having the fight, not a flight instinct. Not really described as sweet by those he meets, always polite but not lovey-dovey with strangers.. Caesar pours on the kisses and snuggle with everybody and he is all flight, not fight. Although he does run barking behind or under Brutus.

So when he falumped up to some pit bulls on the dog beach at Noyo, they came for him and he ran away in terror.  Brutus had been busy swimming in the ocean but came out like a rocket and turned the snarling pack back and chased them all back to the homeless crowd they were with.

That was when he adopted Caesar and has been looking out for him ever since. The little fella, not too little actually, just worships Brutus and watches and copies his every move.  He is so inquisitive and so friendly and such a scaredy calf sometimes, but insists on meeting everyone all the time and doing everything and looking in every corner and hole. He often gets so scared he tinkles himself but insists on kissing and snuggling every other living creature. He likes cats. 

He also caught a fish out of the pond and yesterday captured one of the wild mallards that live on the pond, which are always badgering us for food and coming up to the deck. He put a big paw on the terrified creature and held it down but didn’t hurt it, while he examined her. Then he let her go and she flew off in a terrible tizzy, sure to return shortly, but maybe not so close to see if there is any salad or egg shells.

Brutus is now 93 pounds and gets up at 7 am every day to romp with his puppy. They zoom about the house. Caesar jumped into the ocean after Brutus and the pup yelped in pain and jumped out . Then he went and stuck a paw in it and withdrew it and shook it. I never thought it would be much too cold for a guy with an 4 month old undercoat. 

When we first got him, he met Dr. Chaves, who has been very patient and finally can work on Brutus without rumbling and stinkeye. Would this be like that? NO WAY. Caesar LOVES going to the vet and isnt offended by pokes or prods.

Brutus would charge into hell and bite the devil if the guy chased one of his chickens or offended his family But Brutus is gunshy and storm shy, and vacuum cleaner shy. Caesar appears to be afraid of none of those things.  

So bravery is limited. 

We asked Dr. Chaves about getting a genetic test. He warned that many are not legit, but recommended one called Wisdom. The whole science is not as great as advertised, but Colin said there can be important information about genetic issues in them.

We shipped off the Wisdom panel and just got it back!  We had many bets on what he might be. I bet way too many breeds.  

He is a big two and only 5 breeds total.

69% German Shepherd Dog

26% Great Pyrenees

2% Rottweiler

1% White Swiss Shepherd

1% Maremma Sheepdog

WOW! No, Malinois not an Anatolian. He has traces of all kinds of sheepdogs, Italian, French and the Anatolian, but traces. 

Wisdom theorizes from the DNA that Caesar came from a very strong German Shepherd line on one side. A dog of likely AKC top quality breeding met a half GSD/half sheepdog and thus the puppies that ended up discarded were born. Maybe a purebred shepherd person who didn’t want mixed pups?  Somebody was naughty. I would suspect the original owner of being a man who literally scared the piss out of Caesar. We had a very fine reading of Caesar by a woman whose work has always shown tremendous insight. She identified that Caesar knows more than he possibly could sometimes, like being housebroken without anyone teaching him that. She said he has been around for some time and is seeing visions from past lives that he will need to move forward from. Interesting and all on track with what we know of the little/big guy.

He is always running up to people and always trying to find someone or some dog..This could simply be John and his 15 dogs. He was so sad to see John go. He gets this look on his face like he simply has to go and will sneak escape too. It’s a bit scary to see him go away in sould and body and the warmth goes for a few seconds.. Brutus can usually bring him back in more ways than one.. .

He will sit on the beach and just look at the ocean for the longest time, or out back he will look at the pond and the birds. He plays “tiger” and hides and jumps out of the bushes at Brutus. 

Very patient and contemplative, sheepdog traits, not GSD.  German shepherds are worthless for herding sheep. They were originally that. But centuries ago, the breeding for intelligence and human protection took over, and they just can’t. Also, not hunting dogs.  We shall see with Caesar. 

Beware many of these genetic tests, as the good Vet said.  Investigations have found some take money for genetic testings but demand a photo, and just make up the info like a circus barker, from the photo

The scariest part can be the medical info they deleve into, which people often misinterpret. There is a story about a woman who adopted a rescue dog only to determine from the test it had an always fatal gene.

The AKC cautions pet owners about using consumer-brand dog genetic tests to make health-related predictions for their dogs, because the results leave substantial room for interpretation. The AKC says the “correlation [to disease] doesn’t mean causation, so a gene that often occurs with a particular disease might not cause it.” The group suggests considering the dog’s lineage, in addition to the test results, to gain a better understanding of potential health risks for your pup.

The health screen for Caesar found only one gene of concern:

Two copies of the Degenerative Myelopathy mutation are needed for a dog to be affected by this condition, so Caesar should not show disease signs due to this mutation. Please note that similar disease signs could develop due to a different genetic or clinical cause.

The DNA panel found a bunch of sheepdog relatives of Caesar in the Redwood Valley area. It also found his sister Sheeba so two in the litter have become royalty!  (Technically, the woman in the bible who was the Queen of Sheba was from there (somewhere on the Saudi peninsula), but the word Sheba has come to mean queen). She is black like Stormy. Predictably, none of his AKC shepherd relatives are registered with DNA. Mostly just the minority sheepdog parts.

A study by the  Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, revealed that some direct-to-consumer (DTC) dog DNA testing companies may rely more on a photograph of the dog than genetics.

They investigated 6 consumer-direct dog dna testing companies. In some cases, the genetic swab was sent with a picture of the correct dog ,whose genetics had been verified and sometimes they sent a photo of a different dog, much different. An AKC beagle came back as half poodle and half Bichon from a compay named Accu. 

“We wanted to work with dogs where we already had a pretty strong idea of what the test would show,” explains Halie Rando, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in Greene’s lab and lead researcher in the study. “By working with purebreds, we thought we knew what the test results should look like.”

The investigation showed that most of the companies were doing genetic testing, some appeared to skew results based on the photo. Rando said there was no scientific reason for genetic testers to rely on the photo.

A humorous  article by the university featured a champion AKC beagle named Lila.

Variances in testing mechanisms, or the markers used in testing, might explain why some tests reported Lila to be 100% beagle and others reported her to be 90% beagle. It doesn’t explain why one test would report she’s not a beagle.

 “Even among our team of people well-versed in genetics, it can be difficult to understand these small differences, what’s spurious, and what’s meaningful,” Rando says. “It’s a really challenging environment to navigate even with significant genetic literacy.”

Wisdom is a highly rated service and a  NYT top two for this.. What makes me believe the Wisdom  is they found Caesar’s sister in Ukiah and she looks just like Stormy, which is what John said the other puppies mostly looked like. Impossible to fake that.

Plus he shows all the traits. The genetic test comes with a full breakdown of behaviour expectations and he matches it all. Well AMOST. One big miss. The breed breakdown said packratting behavior (caches) is unlikely. This guy has lairs all over now with toys hidden in them. 

So get the rescue dog! If you can spend a lot of time with it. And get the genetic test, just don’t bank the farm on what it says.

Brutus has not been painfully stiff since the day Caesar came. He has gone from liking him as another dog friend to being  his pops. He watches him at all times. Brutus is as ferocious as the little fella is not. And Caesar has gotten Brutus to be more loving. Wise of Brutus as the little guy will soon be bigger and taking care of grandpups.