The Life of Kylie

Since tomorrow is my birthday I thought it was a good time to FINALLY report how my DNA re-test went..
If you’ll recall my test results came back indicating that I was primarily Shih Tzu!! With trace amounts of: Australian Shepherd, Dachshund, Kerry Blue Terrier, and NEWFOUNDLAND! Huh?! I don’t know WHAT that dog would look like, but I’m not it! So we talked to the head science guy and told him we demand a recount and we got one and we got much more plausible results (see below).

What? You can’t read that?

Well allow me to translate.. It says that I am primarily a Parson Russell Terrier. No surprise there! The Newfoundland came back as a false positive (head science guy says they are working on that issue). No surprise there. But the Shih Tzu stayed along with a little Silky Terrier. Ok, that’s a surprise! But the Australian Shepherd stayed too and I guess that’s ok, afterall “Kylie” is an Australian name - it means boomerang!!

So in the end, it turns out I’m a mostly Jack Russell mixed terrier… which is pretty much what we knew before the test! But the bottom line is, I’m one of a kind!

And I’ll be 15 tomorrow!!

** editors note, what the chart actually says is that there is a strong match to “Hedge” breed and that combined with the Kerry Blue and Parson Russell makes a likely match to the Jack Russell Pet population.  You have to remember that Kylie came along a LONG time before the AKC recognized the breed and changed the name from Jack Russell to Parson Russell.  So with a little human intervention and a more deep analysis, a print out said that if the computer HAD to pick a single breed for Kylie it would be Parson Russell.   So what we suspected all along was the case and we got confirmation about a few more breeds that were combined to make the wonder that is Kylie.   It’s all very fascinating and we were even invited to submit for a new analysis in the future, after they have added more genetic samples from the JRT pet population and possibly some dogs from Hawaii that might make Kylie’s results even more clear.  **

I sincerely apologize for my lengthy absence and I assure you its not my fault. My family has just been very busy and very stressed out lately. They’ve been putting me in the car several times a week so I think we’re going somewhere fun but we have just been driving all over town going to empty houses. They told me they were looking for a nice back yard for me.
I didn’t know what they were talking about until the cardboard boxes came out..

Good grief we’re moving!!

Now I’m stressed out! But they say I’m getting a back yard for a slightly belated birthday present..

I say, it’s about time!

Hello, this is a message from Kylie’s mom and blog editor. I just want to apologize for not keeping you all current on Kylie’s comings and goings, things have just been pretty hectic here. But I wanted to share a story about Kylie to keep you entertained.

I cook chicken to add to Kylie’s healthy dog food, I usually cook enough for three or four days at a time and I add 8 pieces to each meal. The size of the pieces vary, some are really small, none are terribly big - so it’s not like she gets the exact same quantity of chicken each time but there are always 8 chunks. Well, the other night I was making her dinner and I noticed I was low on chicken and I knew I wouldn’t have time to cook more that night. I counted and there were 14 or 15 pieces left, so instead of 8 I gave her 7 pieces of chicken.

Normally after she eats Kylie comes to see what the rest of us are having for dinner to see if she can score a little more, then she often takes what we call her evening “dirt bath”, where she rolls around and thrashes on the floor for a few minutes, then she usually settles in for a long, after dinner nap. That night however, Kylie remained very alert, and attentive, and whiny. She would just stare at me and cry a little bit, and anytime I stood up she got excited and tried luring me to the kitchen - the kind of behavior we get when dinner is late for some reason. I kept trying to convince her that she had already had dinner, but it didn’t help. After this went on for hours I started to wonder if this was due to the chicken shortage; so I went to the fridge and took one of the larger of the 7 or 8 pieces that remained for breakfast the next day and tore it in half. I gave it to Kylie and said, “fine, here you go.”

Five minutes later, Kylie was asleep!

I was amazed! But then, even though she’s almost 15, Kylie amazes me almost every day. And for breakfast the next day of course I had to break up another piece of the chicken to make sure there were exactly 8 pieces. I didn’t want to go through that again!

Again, sorry I have been slow with the Kylie news lately, I’ll try to get back on track. In the meantime I did upload some new pictures of her romping in her snow suit that I hope you’ll enjoy.

Guess who’s among the new members of Dogs With Blogs, “the coolest dogs on the internet” ?..

That’s me!

Who knew there were so many dogs with blogs? (I bet not many have had blogs for six years!) Check ‘em out!

My mom learned to knit and all I got was this silly collar…

I think it was supposed to be a scarf originally…

All I know is she said that a sweater would be too much of a challenge for her.

I hope you’re enjoying the photos I’ve been uploading of my recent snow day in the mountains, including the ones in my pretty pink parka!

One of my most loyal fans is my littlest fan, who also happens to be family. Shelby is, I think, my third cousin. I’ve never met her because she lives far away but she’s been adoring me from afar for quite awhile now.

She used to have a stuffed animal puppy she named Baby Kylie that she took with her everywhere; even on vacation where they took photos of Baby Kylie at scenic tourist loacations.

Well for Christmas, Santa brought Shelby a puppy!..

Guess what she named her?…

Meet Baby Kylie!

Shelby & Baby Kylie are inseparable. She is already campaigning to get a cookie bar set up for Baby Kylie, but apparently Baby Kylie would prefer a “chip bar” because if somebody quietly opens a bag of chips on the other side of the house, Baby comes sailing into the room like a maniac! Clearly that sort of thing runs in the family!

So after speaking to people at Mars Veterinary, including one of the head scientist DNA dudes, they agreed that my test results seemed… questionable.

They asked to see some puppy pictures of me, like this one.

They are doing a re-test.

Stay tuned… In the meantime, for more Baby Kylie pictures, click here.

So I was surprised that more people didn’t take a guess at my genetic make up when I posted that I was having a DNA test done, but as it turns out nobody would have EVER guessed correctly.

I finally got the results of my “Wisdom Panel MX,” Mixed Breed Analysis from Mars Veterinary. Are you sitting down?..

The test found “Trace Amounts” of the following:

Australian Shepherd
Dachshund
Kerry Blue Terrier
and are you ready for this?..
NEWFOUNDLAND

And the most “Significant Amount” found was..

SHIH TZU

That’s right, Shih Tzu & Newfie!! Do you see it?

+

=

I DON’T THINK THAT QUITE ADDS UP!

We are currently in discussion with the folks at Mars Veterinary to see if something possibly went wrong with my Wisdom Panel MX, DNA analysis.

I’ll keep you posted…