Wisdom Panel Dog DNA Review

Dogs have an innate ability to make you fall in love with them. Their high energy drive, their constant need to give and take love, and their useful nature make them superb pets to have. In fact, dogs are more than just pets, they become your companions. Pretty much any dog owner out there loves their companion and wants to get to know them as much as possible. This is why DNA test kits have started becoming popular. Today, in our Wisdom Panel review, we’re going to be taking a look at one of the most well-received test kits that are available on the market.

A DNA test kit lets you extract a variety of detailed information about your dog. It can help you identify their breed, their heredity, health conditions, personality traits, and more. Every DNA test kit focuses on extracting different kinds of information. All of this information lets you figure out your dog’s mental and physical needs better. Doing so helps you take better care of them and make sure that they get to enjoy a healthy and comfortable life. Some are great for exploring your dog’s health conditions while others are more suited for breed detection. The Wisdom Panel test kit is one of the best of its kind. Let’s begin with our in-depth review.

Notable Features

What makes Wisdom Panel notable from the very start is the fact that it can identify more than 350 breeds. This test kit has one of the largest breed databases in the world. This makes it an incredibly accurate genetic ancestry identification kit.

Wisdom Panel’s testing methods are patented, and their MDR1 drug sensitivity testing is licensed. The test kit also identifies a variety of health conditions that your dog may develop in the future.
The kit offers a range of qualitative genetic information. It also provides you with your results quickly. Wisdom Panel usually sends your results back to you within 2 to 3 weeks.
The test kit is easy to use. The instructions that come with the kit are easy to follow since the kit doesn’t try to complicate anything over. Wisdom Panel’s website is really helpful as well in this regard. You can get a lot of useful information from there about the test kit. Also, once you have activated your kit and sent it for testing, keeping track of everything through their website is easy.

The test kit results are quite comprehensive. They can be used as reference material during visits to the vet.

What Makes It Great

This kit can detect more than 350 dog breeds. This includes 99% of AKC recognized dog breeds as well. Its ancestry test is capable of accurately identifying three generations worth of genetic information.
Wisdom Panel conducts an MDR1 drug sensitivity test as well. In fact, their MDR1 drug sensitivity is fully licensed. This goes to show that their test results regarding genetic mutations and drug resistance are really accurate.

Its test results also predict your dog’s adult weight. This information provides you with insight on how big your dog will get. It will also help you formulate a better nutritional plan for your dog.
The test results report is comprehensive and provides precise results. You can get in touch with their helpful representatives through email or over the phone to discuss your test results and better understand them.
Wisdom Panel also takes part in charitable animal rights related activities.

What It Leaves To Be Desired

Their test results can be confusing for non-specialists. People complain about having a hard time understanding some parts of the results.
Wisdom Panel occasionally messes up in identifying mixed breeds. Mixed breed detection is tricky and very few test kits can consistently get it right.
Wisdom Panel’s test kit is one of the more expensive of its kind. However, you can get it at a discounted price from some retailers.

How Does It Work?

Like we said before, this test kit is very easy to use. Its packaging comes with two cotton swabs and a prepaid container which you’ll need to use to mail your swabs to the company. Make sure that your dog hasn’t eaten anything for at least 30 minutes before you try to collect a sample. This will minimize the chances of any contaminants being present in your dog’s mouth.

To collect a sample of their saliva, take a cotton swab and gently rub it around your dog’s cheeks for about 10 seconds. Make sure that your dog doesn’t try to bite the swab during the process. Once you’ve collected your dog’s saliva, place the cotton swab into the provided container.

Now, before you mail the samples to Wisdom Panel, make sure that you activate your test kit. This is done by going to the company’s website. Once you’re there, enter your test kit’s registration number. The registration number comes with the kit and can be found on its packaging. Once your test kit is registered, you can mail it to Wisdom Panel and wait. The company will let you know when they receive your kit and will start working on it immediately. You can expect to get your results back in 2 to 3 weeks.

Customer Reviews

The Wisdom Panel test kit is fairly well-received by most people. If you check it out on Amazon, you’ll see that 68% of its users are really happy with its results. Most customers agree that the kit is very easy to use. They are also happy with the short amount of time it takes to get your results. The test kit manages to provide a majority of customers with accurate ancestry results for a variety of mixed breeds as well.

While most of Wisdom Panel’s customer reviews are great, there are a few negative reviews as well. Wisdom Panel has a hard time discerning more complicated mixed breeds. This is because the test kit was developed while testing on mostly purebred dogs. It is interesting to note that a majority of the bad reviews that this kit gets is because of inaccurate heredity results. Some customers also complain about their test results taking longer than three weeks to reach them. Ancestry data often takes longer to produce in more complicated mixed breeds.

Conclusion

Overall, Wisdom Panel’s test kit is a great product that offers a well-rounded genetic testing solution. It is easy to use, produces results relatively fast, and manages to provide accurate readings most of the time. Unfortunately, it has a hard time dealing with overly mixed breeds. There are very few test kits that manage to provide accurate results on mixed breeds that have “true mutt” backgrounds. However, this doesn’t completely justify Wisdom Panel’s performance. At its price range, and with its largest breed database, customers expect to get perfect results.