About Canine Genetic Services

Eldin A. Leighton received his education through the Land Grant university system, studying Animal Science. He earned a BS from New Mexico State University in 1971 and both an MS (1973) and PhD (1979) from Iowa State University, where his major was Animal Breeding with a Statistics minor.

His career was interrupted in 1973 when he completed a three-year US Army tour, serving as a Research Geneticist for the Division of Bio-Sensor Research at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. This assignment involved the “US Army Superdog project,” which aimed to genetically improve military working dogs. Over three years, he analyzed hip quality data from several thousand German Shepherd puppies.

Following graduate school, Dr. Leighton spent a decade in academia at New Mexico State and the University of Maryland, where he led research on the Wye Angus beef cattle herd. Beginning in 1977, he consulted for The Seeing Eye in New Jersey, advising on their canine breeding program. In 1980, he developed a new breeding plan focused on “reducing or eliminating hip dysplasia” while improving overall health and training capability. He assumed complete program management in 1994 and became a full-time employee in 1995, retiring in 2015 after 20 years managing breeding selection and mating protocols.

Subsequently, he founded Canine Genetic Services, providing consulting and data analysis to working dog organizations. He is also one of three developers of the International Working Dog Registry.

Sam is a co-owner of Canine Genetic Services, responsible for its IT infrastructure and server operations. He works across the stack — Laravel and PHP on the backend, React and Material UI on the frontend — and also programs in Python and C++. He is the long-term maintainer of the CGS website and research library.