EmbarkVet

I’m just here to talk about Rampart…

Yes we do! We share anonymized genetic information with bona fide researchers to help accelerate discovery, including researchers at Cornell, NIH, and other institutions. We do not share or sell any customer information (emails, addresses, etc) or personally identifiable information (dog name, registration number) although for important studies we may reach out to customers on another researcher’s behalf to see if they would like to be included. Of course you can always opt-out of this type of sharing if you’re not comfortable with it. We give users the chance to opt-out upfront and they can also edit their preference at any later time to opt out (or opt in) as well.

-Adam

We love shelter dogs! We occasionally work with shelters on promotions that can include some free kits (eg Clear the Shelters). We also are open to providing shelters discounted kits, especially if they are interested in testing a large number of dogs. We can also work with shelters to provide coupon codes to offer folks who are adopting through you. If you’re a shelter/rescue organization interested in working with Embark on any of the above, please fill out the following form: Shelter & Rescue Partnership Opportunity.

Great question u/assplower! We started from day 1 by approaching this as long-term, science-first and not short-term profit-first: giving people the best information science can provide today to care for their dog *and* a goal to collect huge amounts of genetic and phenotypic (or outcome) data so that every test got us closer to understanding (and hopefully preventing) conditions like cancer and hip dysplasia. We're now seeing that paying off given the size of our database (for example, early onset deafness). At the start we were testing over 500X as much genetic content as competitors, and paid a lot more in cost of goods than competitors.

Because we are interested in the long-term value, we have always seen what we do as a partnership with dog owners through the life of their dog. This has meant putting in the work to be the most accurate, most comprehensive, provide the best support, maintain/build the best product experience, and keep people coming back for more.

We've also consistently been the most innovative company in the space, eg building the first canine relative finder, and you can be sure we're continuing to work on new innovations while our competitors work on copying us. :)

-Ryan

Thanks for this question and your interest in helping us expand our reference dataset! We'd love to get more samples from these breeds. We rely a lot on owners and breeders submitting samples and registration paperwork and pedigrees from an authoritative breed registration body. We are only able to differentiate a breed when we have a distinct genetic signature for that population, and we will add a breed to our Breed List when we are able to reliably identify that signature in multiple populations of dogs.
You can help us by sharing pedigrees and registration papers, and for the dogs that can be included in our reference panel, we can offer free or discounted kits. You can feel free to share this brief survey with other owners, and we will be in contact if we are able to provide the complementary or discounted kits for your dog(s). --Aaron