Pet Version of Shazam Will Tell you the Breed of Your Fur-Baby

Yesterday my 9 year old step son (who is clearly more tech-savvy than I) was messing around on his dad's phone. Out of the blue he says, "cool! The phone just told me what kind of dog Mika is." Umm what? Apparently there is a feature on the Google Pixel phone (possibly other brands too) that will tell you what breed your animal is with photo recognition software.

We adopted Mika from Paws and Claws Rochester a couple years ago (check out our adoption video below!). She was a stray, so there was little information about her available. Because of this software, we were able to determine that she is an American Staffordshire Terrier, one of several breeds commonly mistaken as American Pit Bull Terriers. That's when we turned the camera on Khuno....

I was completely blown away! I have papers that say Khuno is a purebred Miniature American Eskimo Dog. Now all of a sudden I'm being told that he's a Volpino Italiano. I did some more research and discovered that more than 10 years ago, "the AKC FSS declined recognition of the Volpino due to concern over its similarity to the American Eskimo Dog."

I know what you're thinking, why believe what photo recognition is telling you when you have papers? I literally put in a dozen pictures of Khuno, read all of the information about Volpinos, and it is true. His temperament, the way he looks, it all points to him being a different breed. Holy crap! I feel like I need to change his name to an Italian name now... Bruno?

Mika's Adoption Day!