writ­ten 05/27/23

What

Com­par­i­son of dog DNA and health pan­el test between Embark Dog DNA Test and Wis­dom Pan­el

Quick Comparison Chart

	Embark	Wis­dom
Date Bought	Sept 1, 2020	May 8, 2023
Cost	$179.14	$127.99
Sam­ple Received	Sept 14	May 17
Results Received	Sept 30	May 27
Test Dura­tion	16 days (12 busi­ness)	10 days (7 busi­ness)
Breeds Test­ed	350+	350+
Sam­ple Type	Sali­va	Cheek Cells
Date Found­ed	2015	2005
Tests Run	?	2 mil­lion (2020)

My Opinion

Between the 2 tests, and as a lay per­son, I pre­fer Embark. Wis­dom Pan­el has a larg­er par­tic­i­pant pool hav­ing been in prac­tice for 10 more years, and there­fore has more infor­ma­tion to pull from (vet­eri­nar­i­ans tend to use Wis­dom Pan­el). In my opin­ion, Embark is not only more pleas­ing to look at and eas­i­er to use from a user per­spec­tive, but seems to test for more breeds. In a way, Wis­dom Pan­el might be too pre­cise, that it ana­lyzes into the breeds that make up some breeds. For instance, the Moun­tain Cur is a breed from the time of the Amer­i­can set­tlers that like­ly cross­bred with native species as well as oth­ers. Wis­dom does not include them. Then again, the larg­er pool of infor­ma­tion to work from means more pos­si­ble rel­a­tives, like in my case (dad, broth­er, and uncle)! Embark tests for ancient lines like din­goes and wolf ances­try, Wis­dom does not.

Bot­tom Line: Embark is pret­ti­er with slight­ly more breeds. If you want cheap­er and faster, go Wis­dom Pan­el. Either way, the results appear sim­i­lar to each oth­er, and both offer fun insights into your dog! I bought both, and I’m glad I did!

Date Bought and Turnaround (Sample Received to Results)

	Date Bought	Turn­around	Turn­around (Days)
Embark	09/01/2020	09⁄14 — 09⁄30	16
Wis­dom	05/08/2023	05⁄08 — 05⁄27	10

Cost

	MSRP	Dis­count	Ship­ping	State Tax­es	Total
Embark	$199	$30 (15%)	$0	Yes	$179.14
Wis­dom	$159	$32 (20%)	$0	No	$127.99

Both offer pre­paid sam­ple ship­ping through USPS

Science Stuff

Embark: uti­lizes cus­tom SNP Microar­ray devel­oped in part­ner­ship with Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine

Wis­dom: uses Neogen Genomics; Par­ent com­pa­ny: Mars Pet­care

Both labs are CLIA cer­ti­fied

Kit Activation and Account

Both tests require acti­va­tion before sam­ple col­lec­tion and test­ing. They both come with easy-to-fol­low instruc­tions to acti­vate via mobile or desk­top.

Option­al pro­file build includ­ing pic­tures and small bio avail­able for both accounts. There is no require­ment for shar­ing of infor­ma­tion, but it’s fun to find DNA rel­a­tives espe­cial­ly with pic­tures!

Sample Collection

Embark: Sali­va

Wis­dom: Cheek cells

NO Food or drink for 30 min­utes pri­or to col­lec­tion

Embark uses a sin­gle swab that is spongy and thick­er. Swab for at least 60 sec­onds, focus­ing on col­lect­ing sali­va, not scrap­ing. It is rec­om­mend­ed to show your dog a treat (not give it to them yet!) to induce sali­va­tion. Turn the swab around into the sta­bi­liz­ing liq­uid, screw it closed, and send it back.

Wis­dom uses 2 swabs that have hard­er bris­tles. Swab the inside of the cheek for about 15 sec­onds using firm pres­sure with each swab (make sure there is no food debris inside the mouth!), let air dry for 15 min­utes, then return to sleeve and send the box back.

Results

Breed and Ancestry

For her pre­dom­i­nant breed, both tests come up with about 21% Tree­ing Walk­er Coon­hound. Both tests also list Amer­i­can Pit Bull ter­ri­er, Aus­tralian Cat­tle Dog, Labrador Retriev­er, and Box­er as the oth­er main breeds. As a whole, both tests show sim­i­lar results.

What about that Moun­tain Cur from Embark’s side? It’s not even men­tioned in Wis­dom! Even when I only had Embark’s results, I think that the Moun­tain Cur is such a mix of breeds that the oth­er breeds that show up might actu­al­ly be part of the Moun­tain Cur itself. When com­par­ing images of the Tree­ing Walk­er Coon­hound, the Moun­tain Cur, and the Amer­i­can Pit­bull Ter­ri­er to Cora, com­bined with her tem­pera­ment and habits, I have to side with Embark on this one. Wis­dom does­n’t even men­tion the Moun­tain Cur any­where in the list.

Now com­pare it to my weird­ly pro­por­tioned dog. I strong­ly feel like the Embark results are accu­rate. Super long legs of the Tree­ing Walk­er, half-long flop­py ears, half-square and half-long snout, sausage-shaped chonky body, back that rais­es into the air as opposed to curv­ing down as it reach­es the tail which she holds up when she tracks, but oth­er­wise ter­mi­nates at her hocks, and not much of a neck. Her head also isn’t super large like a pit bul­l’s usu­al­ly is. How­ev­er, I do think she does have pit­tie in her giv­en the full-butt wig­gles when she’s hap­py and the super chew­er ten­den­cies. She has a strong pro­tec­tion instinct, but also has an inter­est­ing habit of lik­ing to scram­ble around rocks and ele­va­tion.

Family Tree

Both tests sug­gest pos­si­ble Fam­i­ly Trees

Genetics

Both tests dis­play breed chro­mo­some break­downs. Wis­dom groups them via breed type (e.g. Guard, Sport­ing, Hound, etc) while Embark focus­es on the breeds them­selves. Per­haps because Wis­dom gave more breeds for my dog?

DNA Relatives

One of the most fun fea­tures of both tests are find­ing genet­ic rel­a­tives! Inter­est­ing­ly, Wis­dom Pan­el found Cora’s father and broth­er! Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nei­ther pro­file is fleshed out with pic­tures or descrip­tions, but has enough infor­ma­tion to be use­ful to me. For instance, Cora’s broth­er is 3 years and 3 months old…which means that my guess that her birth­day was in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 is the same! Her Father was most­ly Tree­ing Walk­er Coon­hound. I real­ly wish they had pic­tures to com­pare!

Cora’s Dad and Broth­er (Wis­dom)

Health

Embark came back with 3 genet­ic anom­alies to look out for, while Wis­dom did­n’t catch any­thing of note

Traits

This is neato to see the break­down of traits. Both tests allow down­load­ing of tech­ni­cal reports that break it all down. I won’t post it all here, since there’s too many. They cov­er traits such as: fur coat, weight, mus­cle bulk, alti­tude tol­er­ance, and body fea­tures. Here is a sam­ple, how­ev­er.

What if your dog is purebred?

I have often won­dered how accu­rate these tests are. Like, what would hap­pen if the dog you’re test­ing is a pure­bred dog? Embark offers Pure­bred tests as opposed to mixed-breed tests. Wis­dom Pan­el only offers one test type. Makes you won­der why Embark offers a pure­bred test (they say it’s because the results are dis­played dif­fer­ent­ly if you have a pure­bred dog). Any­ways, I had a dog test­ed that I sus­pect­ed of being pure­bred, though was­n’t sure.

Here is the result from Wis­dom Pan­el!