ohmidog!

Vice president-elect Joe Biden, who faced some heat for his decision to purchase a dog from a breeder, says his family plans to get a second dog — this one from a shelter or rescue organization.

“We’re going to have more than one puppy,” he said in on the ABC News show This Week With George Stephanopoulous.

Biden’s purchase of a 6-week-old German shepherd from a Chester County breeder Dec. 6 touched off a national debate about pet-shopping, with critics pointing to the millions of dogs euthanized in shelters each year.

Biden said his family is not getting the dog in an effort to appear politically correct, but because his wife wants it, and because his family has almost always had two dogs. Read more »

Ace and Elliott both bravely submitted to having their blood drawn yesterday for DNA testing, meaning it’s only a matter of time until our ”What’s in Your Mutt Mystery Contest” reaches its final chapter.

Elliott was the winner of our reader contest in which mutt owners wrote about their dogs and why they wanted to know the breeds that were in them.

Ace is my dog, whose DNA test last year — not long after the tests first came out — was recounted in the Baltimore Sun series, Hey, Mister, What Kind of Dog is That?”

The Canine Heritage test — a home version in which the pet owner swabs the inside of the dog’s cheek and sends the swab in for analysis — found him to be Chow and Rottweiler, two of the 38 breeds that particular test, at that particular time, checked for.

Since then, the technology has improved.  The new Wisdom Panel MX Mixed Breed Analysis, from Mars Veterinary, tests blood, drawn and sent in by your veterinarian, and can detect the presence of more than 150 breeds. The new Canine Heritage test, available from MMI Genomics, can now detect more than 100 breeds through cheek cells collected on the swab.

When Mars Veterinary, makers of the Wisdom Panel, offered us a chance to try out the new product we agreed. The company sent us two free test kits, one for Ace, one for our contest winner, who turned out to be Elliott.

On Saturday, we all gathered at my house for the blood drawing — Ace, Elliott, his humans, Andrew and Kelly Gould, and Dr. Johnny Slaughter, a mobile veterinarian in Baltimore, and ohmidog! advertiser, who volunteered his services. Read more »