Is even better than the blind leading the blind.

So one of my agility friends is a scientist. I believe she is the only scientist I know! Isn't it weird when you find out your agility friends are things like important scientists or famous professors or Jeremy Piven? OK. Maybe Jeremy Piven is not an agility friend. But wouldn't he be a good agility friend? I think he would be one friend I would be able to actually beat all the time is what I think. And would tell me when my legs look to fat to squeeze into my skort.

Leslie is a lab coat wearing (I think) molecular biologist (maybe I got that wrong-a genetics scientist for sure), and her company is one of the ones that can test dog DNA. So when I got Gustavo, she gave me a packet with a swab so we could test him because he was such a mystery pup.

This was back when we thought maybe he was the tiniest shrunken border collie in the world, that I had a authentic border chihuahuallie. He was the toast of agility town for a bit, Welcome tiniest border collie in the world! Well, after a month or two of teaching him to Sit, I was pretty sure that he was NOT a border collie type. Still feel some pressure on me when people at the dog show ask me, "How's the cutey mini border collie doing-ready to start trialing him?" and I am like, "la la la la la" and change the subject to his extreme cuteness. But we were still excited to see what kind of DNA he'd come back with. Maybe it would be a clue to his unique learning style.

Test numero uno came back nada on 38 breeds of dog, but the scientists said, Hey, we'll retest with the NEW test which tests over 100 breeds! And we'll even have you do another sample in case the first one wasn't quite right since he came back as a nada. Pretty much most breeds of dogs on the big test. Some I've never heard of. And definitely all the ones maybe you would guess Gustavo was. Chihuahua. Border collie. Sheltie. Papillon. Mystery Terrier. He looks like none of those, but they are always people's guesses. Does he act like any of them? Um, not that I can tell. I don't know much about papillons, or shelties so who knows. Do they take 3 months to teach a trick to that every other dog in your universe learned in 3 minutes?

So anyways, cool. Definitely the retest would show us what mysterious Gustavo was, our Mexican Pet. Gotta be one of all of those breeds. Gotta be some DNA in there somewhere. Prove Gary wrong that we do not have a squirrel mixed with cat for a dog pet.

His official certificate came in the mail today. Of these 100 breeds of dogs, he came back as an Untested Breed. Yep. His primary breed DNA is the variety of Untested Breed. With no secondary breed characteristics. Nothing In the Mix. 100% untested. Like untestable? The unteachable teaching the untestable dog who is hard to teach. Honestly, it seems like almost too cool to be true to me.

The results are in-he may not be a dog!

So I got a call today from the dog dna testers. Remember them? An agility lady I know works in the DNA of dog field and she tested him to see if he is indeed, a shrunken border collie. Because everyone thought, wow-the first teensy tiny mini collie-let's find out. I was happy to oblige and get him a free DNA test.

What they called about, was that, um, he doesn't have ANY DNA that matches any of their 38 breeds of dog that they have genomes for. Which includes border collies, chihuahuas, shelties, and 35 more. If he even had ANY DNA of any of these dogs, something would come up. But he has NONE. They retested him multiple times. And retested him again. He stumped the DNA people.

Leslie told me from the beginning, sometimes they'll come up as something weird, St. Bernard/Poodle, there's that gene somewhere way back in the ancestory and that's all they can pull. Even though, clearly your dog is not a St. Bernard or a Poodle. They don't have many terriers in there, and he shows many signs to have a bunch of terrier in there. Right now, he is outside digging holes where there used to be plants to stick his head in and bark at underground gophers. But Gustavo came up, None of the Above. I still need to find out from Leslie, um, is this sort of weird or does it happen all the time in the world of dog DNA?

Like, is he even a dog? The other dogs, you can look at and say, Oh, Timmy, he is a pomeranian. Sort of. We KNOW Ruby is a damn terrier. Otterpop looks like a chihiuahua and a cattle dog and acts like a terrorist cattle dog. People like to do that with their mutts. But everyone that looks at Gustavo says, after scratching their heads, hmmm. I've given up. He's just a damn small dog. I am pretty sure he is indeed, a dog.

DNA or not, I've been scratching my own little apple head trying to unlock his learning key. He's different from any dog I've ever worked with. Which isn't super many, so there's probably lots of other dogs out there somewhere like him. Sometimes he's a little smarty pants, front of the class. Sometimes, we think he is a teensy bit retarded. Sometimes he wants to learn and go fast, sometimes he likes a leaf. He's more unpredictable than anyone else I've trained. He seems to forget things randomly, after he seemd to have gotten them. He changes rules up. All of a sudden one day with him, there is no Sit. His lightbulb doesn't flash on so lickety split like most dogs I've trained. It does go on, but I just have to work a little bit harder with him. Very NOT border collie.

In fact today when we practiced, I went on the maybe he is a little retarded theory and let's make it soooo clear. Clicker everything. Pretend I am training a chicken. Remove emotion when teaching new skills. Bring it back in for fast running and tugging. Use the flawless mechanics. It worked good today, but being unpredictable, maybe it won't tomorow. Like he could be sort of agility savant? Rainman? He's not anti-social, exactly the opposite. He just learns kinda slower than any of my other dogs. One cerveza short of seis. But solamente uno. Lots and lots and lots of repeating the question please. Do it again and again and you get it. I think he is the one that's going to make me actually have to be on heckuva dog trainer. You can't just throw the frisbee with this one. Thanks Gustavo!