Dogged Research

Tasha
By the time Shadow's draft genome was in press at Science, scientists at the National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute were holding auditions to find the best dog for the job of having its entire genome sequenced. They considered 120 different dogs from 60 breeds before deciding on Tasha, a female boxer that lives in New York State.

What made Tasha so special was that her genome had the least amount of variation, key to speeding up the sequencing process. Two years later Tasha's genome was published in the December 8, 2005, issue of Nature, heralding the arrival of dog genomics.

Source : Scientific Americal
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=top-ten-dogs-science&photo_id=12F7CD82-E404-985B-31A3EEC846CD8843