I was skeptical when the rescue group told me that Elly was a Puggle, she is really small for a Puggle and doesn’t look like any Puggle that I have ever seen. It wasn’t the breed that attracted me to her anyway, it was this face:
I do see the Pug in her and she does spend a lot of time tracking and sniffing like a Beagle. Her doggie friend Sophie is a Puggle and when they are together they act a lot alike.
I was hoping that knowing her breed(s) might help me sort out her behavior issues: she is skittish and very slow to trust, she is afraid of loud noises and many things that move, she has a weird form of separation anxiety, just to name a few. On the other hand she spends most of her time on walks with her nose on the ground. She would chase cats if I let her and she has chased squirrels out of the back yard. She recently discovered that creatures live in the holes in the park and she started digging.
I hope the breed info from her DNA will help me understand her better.
Without further ado here are Elly’s breed results from Embark:
44.5% Pug
24.5% Chihuahua
9.0% Shih Tzu
8.9% Maltese
7.6% Pomeranian
5.5% Brussels Griffon
I’ve had years of experience with pugs but I don’t know anything about the other breeds. I did some reading and I do see some Chihuahua traits in her. I think her coat type is from the Chi as well as her inclination to shake when she is really scared. The thing that doesn’t match in my mind is that all of the listed breeds are known to be outgoing and confident… certainly not Elly!
Elly also spends most of her time with her nose on the ground tracking, a trait that the majority of the identified breeds don’t seem to have. Of the listed breeds the only dog that has a history of tracking or chasing is the Brussels Griffon- they originated as rat killers in Belgium.
There are some other interesting results from Embark such as their estimated weight of 8 pounds for Elly’s weight (she is healthy at 15 pounds) and her ‘Wolfiness’ score of 5.4% which is exceptionally high (forum post on Wolfiness score). She also tested clear on most of the genetic disease markers. Her coloring also fascinates me, its called piebald with black ticking, which could of come from a couple of the identified breeds. Embark does not test for the piebald gene yet, according to them she should be solid black. But these topics are for another post.
Back to the blog title…of course I called it Life with a Tri-Puggle when I started the blog since Maggie’s blog is Life with a Tri Pug, but Elly is clearly not a Puggle. Dogs that are pug/chihuahua mixes are called Chugs, but she is not a Chug either since she has several other breeds swirled in her DNA. Her highest percentage is Pug so I kept the Tri-Pug and added the only other thing that makes sense…MUTT!