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Could the next big cop show revolve around animals? DNA is going to the dogs, and the evidence could help solve vicious crimes. When Ryan Armstrong was only 7-years-old, his thumb was nearly torn off and his chest punctured by a loose Rottweiler. Ryan remembers the attack vividly. "I was very scared. I thought I was going to die right there," he told us. Ryan's dad Jeff worked for years to find the dog, but got nowhere - until someone suggested comparing DNA on the jacket Ryan had been wearing, to saliva from local dogs. Jeff decided to try it. "If you saw your child laying there all tore up, was this close to death, I think now you need to know who did it, who's responsible for this." Dr. Janice Sojka is an animal forensics professor. She explains how animal DNA tests work. "Anything that can be done for human DNA could theoretically be done for animal DNA. They don't have to have a suspicion about what animal was responsible for something, they can absolutely prove it." Sojka says you can take DNA from animal hair, saliva, even chew toys. You send the samples to a specialized veterinary genetics lab. Elizabeth Wictum runs the lab at UC-Davis in California. She says the lab handles all kinds of animal samples for many different reasons. "Sometimes it involves stolen animals. Another scenario is when the animal is actually the perpetrator such as dog attacks on other pets. " That's what happened to Marylin Christian. She was heartbroken after her cat Cody was killed right in her backyard. She was devastated but determined to find the killer. "We have other small animals as well as children," she explained. "So, we wanted to make sure that our family was safe, two legged and four legged." Marylin believed a neighbor's dog was to blame. But, without an eyewitness, she was at a loss, until she decided to use DNA to find the vicious animal. She went ahead with the test, comparing the DNA of the suspected dog's saliva to hairs found on Cody. The lab confirmed her suspicions…telling her there is only a 1 in 67 million chance that the hairs belong to a dog other than her neighbor's. "To me, this proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it was in fact that dog," she said. Shortly after Marylin got the results, the animal's owner moved away. Ryan's dad says he was relieved to finally get justice as well. After testing two dogs in the area against Ryan's jacket, the lab got a match. The owner was arrested and charged with having a dangerous dog. So how much does this cost? DNA tests run $500 to $1000 and results take two to 12 weeks. If you do decide to do an animal DNA test, the rules are similar to human rules. If the animal doesn't belong to you, you need permission or a court order to obtain a sample. And if it's something you may need to use in court, have a professional obtain the sample.