Every year, breed-popularity rankings go round the internet, and every year somebody reads them as a census. They aren’t. A registry counts the dogs whose owners registered them, and that is a much smaller number than you’d think. In a US consumer survey published in Clinical Theriogenology in 2019, only 41% of purebred owners said they had registered their most recently acquired dog with any breed registry. 49% had not, and 10% weren’t sure. The rankings still tell you something about which breeds are rising and falling. They cannot tell you how many dogs of a breed are alive.
That cuts both ways, which is why it’s worth knowing. A breed can look vanishingly rare in the rankings and be doing fine outside them. The American Foxhound, whose working packs register with hunt-club studbooks rather than the AKC, is the classic case. A breed can also be as scarce as its numbers suggest. The Skye Terrier ranked 185th of 201 AKC breeds in 2024, and in its Scottish homeland about 70 puppies were registered that same year. There the registry and the reality agree, and the breed’s own clubs are the ones to tell you so.
So when a number about a breed turns up, ask two questions before you repeat it: counted by whom, and counting what? Ask the parent club, which knows its own breed better than any ranking. And if a low number makes you want to rush out and find a puppy, remember that a scarce breed needs stewards before it needs buyers.
Sources
- Strand, Smith, New & Reichman, “How outdated perceptions have reshaped dog marketplace,” Clinical Theriogenology (2019): 1,000-respondent online sample, of whom 295 were current purebred owners; surveyed Jan 2013 – Feb 2019. PDF. Read 21 Sept 2026.
- AKC, Skye Terrier History. Gives the 2024 rank.
- ABC News (Australia), 30 May 2025. Gives the UK Skye registrations.