How Many Kinds of Dogs are There?
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By Chris Robinson
A few weeks ago, a group of friends of mine were sitting in my living room ragging on me about the amount of time (and money) I devote to training, hunting, showing, trialing and just plain caring for and loving my dog. One of them, clearly a non-dog person, pointed to Bo’s toy box and said, “How much do you think you’ve spent just on toys for him? Multiply that by all the dogs in this country and you have an idea of how much people spend on just one aspect of dog ownership. You could arm a fair-sized nation on American dog toy expenditures alone. How many dog owners do you think there are worldwide? For that matter, how many kinds of dogs are there in the world?”
Well, let’s see. I didn’t have any answers for his first two questions although if I looked at my tax returns for the past four years, I could probably make a fairly good guess at the amount spent on toys. But for his last question, there are some official “guesstimates.”
There are 344 different breeds officially recognized by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI.) And, since the subject is “kinds of dogs” and not necessarily recognized breeds, if you throw in all the “designer dogs” and the other mixes–mostly this or that breed–there are probably many more than the official estimate of about 600. But, after I’d thought about it for a few moments, I replied, “Actually, there are just two kinds of dogs in the world, mine and those belonging to someone else.” The rest of it–breed, type of work they do, color–are just matters of preference. Indeed, whether gun dog, hound, working breed, terrier, herding dog, companion dog or what-have-you, what it comes down to is this: One of the world’s dogs lives with me while all the others are someplace else.
Let’s take sporting dogs just as an example. Two dogs are working cover looking for a bird. Both are competent and stylish covering the ground but only one of them is yours. Which dog will you watch most of the time? If they’re pointing breeds and both happen to hit point simultaneously, to which dog will you walk to flush the bird? If they are retrievers or spaniels and both each flush a bird within moments of each other, when the birds are down, which one will you focus on during the retrieves? Which dog will you praise and which dog will get the pats from you? That’s what I mean by there being only two fundamental kinds of dogs, mine and all the others.
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Posted by AnthonyA
on Jul 11 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
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