Between 1946 and 2001, the AKC registered 42,280,840 dogs while increasing their breed count from 107 to 150.
That may sound like a lot of dogs (it is!) but today the AKC registry is in free fall, with total numbers plummeting by 60 percent in the last 15 years, and some suggesting the AKC may go out of business altogether by 2025.
In recent years, AKC registration numbers have fallen so fast that the AKC no longer publishes them; the last breed-by-breed numbers were published in 2006.
Today, less than 12 percent of all dogs in the U.S. are AKC registered, while more than half are cross-breeds or mutts.
Of those dogs that are AKC registered, more than half are accounted for by just 10 breeds.
The rarest 50 AKC breeds combined represent just 1.2 percent of all AKC registrations, or less than 0.15 percent of all dogs in the United States (i.e. if we had a population of 2,000 dogs in front of us, a total of just 3 AKC-registered dogs would come from any of the 50 breeds named below).
One take-away message from all these numbers is that a lot of dog writers today seem to be missing the forest for the trees.
Yes, a lot of pure bred dogs are health care wrecks.
But isn't there a bigger problem in the world of dogs that too many remain deadly silent about?
Consider this: more Pit Bulls are killed in U.S. shelters every year than ALL American Kennel Club and United Kennel Club registration combined.
If you are writing about dog welfare and health and are not talking about that, you are missing the canine story of the decade.
And it's not just an American story is it?
Consider this: Last year less than 110 Neopolitan Mastiffs were registered with the U.K. Kennel Club, while down at a single shelter in London, they put down 800 Pit Bulls -- i.e. "Staffordshire Bull Terrier types". That's about one-third of all the healthy dogs euthanized last year at the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. That's more dead Pit Bulls from that single shelter than the number of Pekingese, Chinese Cresteds, Portgese Water Dogs, or Boston Terriers registered by the Kennel Club that year. And why did they put down so many "Staffordshire Bull Terrier types"? Simple: Because no one wanted them.
And yet these dogs are still being bred by people who say they love them.
And they are still being acquired in droves by people who say they want them.
And yet what happens next is all to predictable: about half of these dogs end up on death row because they prove to be too much for their owners.
And what is the dog writing community, saying about all this?
Not much. The silence is pretty deafening.
And why is that? Mostly because folke are bullied when they do write about it. Try to talk about solutions, and just see how quickly the Pit Bull denialists show up!
"Blame the deed not the breed" they wail.
But they don't mean the deed of breeding dogs for quick cash, do they? No, that's a sacred cow.
Talk about a ban on advertising these dogs for cash sales, and suddenly there is no concern at all about the dogs. Now it's all about property rights.
The dead dogs?
They offer up no solutions for them, other than to fire up the ovens and push a few thousand more corpses into the landfill while, like parrots, they squawk "ban the deed not the breed."
That may sound like a lot of dogs (it is!) but today the AKC registry is in free fall, with total numbers plummeting by 60 percent in the last 15 years, and some suggesting the AKC may go out of business altogether by 2025.
In recent years, AKC registration numbers have fallen so fast that the AKC no longer publishes them; the last breed-by-breed numbers were published in 2006.
Today, less than 12 percent of all dogs in the U.S. are AKC registered, while more than half are cross-breeds or mutts.
Of those dogs that are AKC registered, more than half are accounted for by just 10 breeds.
- Labrador Retrievers
- German Shepherd Dogs
- Yorkshire Terriers
- Beagles
- Golden Retrievers
- English Bulldogs
- Boxers
- Dachshunds
- Poodles
- Shih Tzu
The rarest 50 AKC breeds combined represent just 1.2 percent of all AKC registrations, or less than 0.15 percent of all dogs in the United States (i.e. if we had a population of 2,000 dogs in front of us, a total of just 3 AKC-registered dogs would come from any of the 50 breeds named below).
- Spinoni Italiani
- Bluetick Coonhounds
- Kerry Blue Terriers
- Manchester Terriers
- Redbone Coonhounds
- Australian Terriers
- Tibetan Mastiffs
- Briards
- English Toy Spaniels
- Welsh Springer Spaniels
- Irish Terriers
- Petits Bassets Griffons Vendeens
- Miniature Bull Terriers
- Clumber Spaniels
- Field Spaniels
- Boykin Spaniels
- Plotts
- Black Russian Terriers
- Affenpinschers
- Lakeland Terriers
- German Pinschers
- Greyhounds
- Bedlington Terriers
- Scottish Deerhounds
- Swedish Vallhunds
- American Water Spaniels
- Kuvaszok
- Pulik
- Curly-Coated Retrievers
- Lowchen
- Irish Water Spaniels
- Polish Lowland Sheepdogs
- Irish Red and White Setters
- Ibizan Hounds
- Sealyham Terriers
- Beaucerons
- Komondorok
- Sussex Spaniels
- Pharaoh Hounds
- Glen of Imaal Terriers
- Finnish Spitz
- Norwegian Buhunds
- Skye Terriers
- Otterhounds
- Pyrenean Shepherds
- Canaan Dogs
- Dandie Dinmont Terriers
- Harriers
- American Foxhounds
- English Foxhounds
One take-away message from all these numbers is that a lot of dog writers today seem to be missing the forest for the trees.
Yes, a lot of pure bred dogs are health care wrecks.
But isn't there a bigger problem in the world of dogs that too many remain deadly silent about?
Consider this: more Pit Bulls are killed in U.S. shelters every year than ALL American Kennel Club and United Kennel Club registration combined.
If you are writing about dog welfare and health and are not talking about that, you are missing the canine story of the decade.
And it's not just an American story is it?
Consider this: Last year less than 110 Neopolitan Mastiffs were registered with the U.K. Kennel Club, while down at a single shelter in London, they put down 800 Pit Bulls -- i.e. "Staffordshire Bull Terrier types". That's about one-third of all the healthy dogs euthanized last year at the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. That's more dead Pit Bulls from that single shelter than the number of Pekingese, Chinese Cresteds, Portgese Water Dogs, or Boston Terriers registered by the Kennel Club that year. And why did they put down so many "Staffordshire Bull Terrier types"? Simple: Because no one wanted them.
And yet these dogs are still being bred by people who say they love them.
And they are still being acquired in droves by people who say they want them.
And yet what happens next is all to predictable: about half of these dogs end up on death row because they prove to be too much for their owners.
And what is the dog writing community, saying about all this?
Not much. The silence is pretty deafening.
And why is that? Mostly because folke are bullied when they do write about it. Try to talk about solutions, and just see how quickly the Pit Bull denialists show up!
"Blame the deed not the breed" they wail.
But they don't mean the deed of breeding dogs for quick cash, do they? No, that's a sacred cow.
Talk about a ban on advertising these dogs for cash sales, and suddenly there is no concern at all about the dogs. Now it's all about property rights.
The dead dogs?
They offer up no solutions for them, other than to fire up the ovens and push a few thousand more corpses into the landfill while, like parrots, they squawk "ban the deed not the breed."
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