**5. Conclusions**

In this paper, we showed that exons 13, 17, and 18 of the *KIT* gene do not present with SNPs in our cohort of COMs, suggesting that they are not involved in the pathogenesis or progression of COM. Moreover, the amplified status was not statistically associated in any way to a mutational profile in the *KIT* gene, nor to the expression of the KIT protein itself or to the Ki67 marker.

Immunohistochemically, we proposed a quantitative, replicable method for the evaluation of KIT expression, through which 84.6% of the samples (11/13) were detected to be positive for KIT. Although the number of cases included in this study did not allow us to draw definitive conclusions, our findings provide new insights for the current knowledge on the use of pet dogs as a spontaneous model for the study of hMMs. Further studies with a greater number of cases are needed to clarify unresolved questions, including the role played by other kinases that have also been found to be altered in our cohort via aCGH analysis, such as *PTK2*, *STK3*, *TEC*, *PDGFRA*, *VEGFR2*, and *CD63*, which so far have received less attention.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, G.B. and M.C.; methodology, G.B. and M.C.; formal analysis, G.B. and A.S.; investigation, B.P. and G.B.; resources, L.C. and M.C.; writing—original draft preparation, B.P and G.B.; writing—review and editing, A.S., L.C. and M.C.; visualization, G.B. and A.S.; supervision, M.C.; project administration, M.C.; funding acquisition, L.C. and M.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank Iussich (from the Department of Veterinary Science of the University of Turin) and Peña (from the Department of Animal Medicine, Surgery and Pathology of the Complutense University of Madrid) for providing some of the FFPE samples. The authors also thank Ferraresso, Zanetti and Guerra (from the Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science of the University of Padua) for their support with laboratory practices. Sammarco is supported by an American–Italian Cancer Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
