Dog Stats – Positive Trends in Purebred Dog Ownership

By Amy Fernandez

Lately I’ve been wondering about a glaring–and growing–statistical anomaly parading around my neighborhood. Specifically, I am referring to those legions of suburban dog walkers and the nature of the merchandise tethered to the ends of those leads.

Well, this is Queens, not a suburb per se. Technically, it is classified as part of Manhattan, which also means that it’s included in the city’s annual dog census. According to most estimates, we’ve got roughly half a million canine residents. That may sound like a lot, but not really considering they’re spread out among 8.5 million humans. Which brings me to the alternate reality that promoted this story.

Based on my observations, we not only have a lot of dogs in Queens, a disproportionate number of them are purebreds, and frequently not the breeds you would expect.

For instance, dwindling Terrier popularity has been an accepted fact in this sport for over fifty years, especially those classic, short-legged, hard-coated breeds. I didn’t quite believe my eyes when the first Scottie strolled down my street a couple years ago. Now there’s three, in addition to five Westies, a Welsh and a Lakeland, two Airedales, also two Wire Fox Terriers and… this truly was quite encouraging to see… two different Smooths! And that’s just one group. In recent years, more and more breeds from every AKC group have popped up around my local streets and parks.

Now that possibility- as we well know – directly contradicts recent news coming out of 260 Mad. Even though AKC stopped publishing their annual registration numbers a few years ago, their yearly breed popularity ranking is still widely considered the decisive barometer of what’s going on in the purebred gene pool. And that main message has been the same sad, steady decline.

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Posted by Alex on May 10 2018. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.