|
Humans have been creating new dog breeds for centuries, selecting
for a particular purpose or look. There can be a tremendous difference
in how happy you are with a dog depending on its personality, activity
level, demands on your attention, health, and other factors -- all
related to what breed it is... or in the case of a mutt, all the
breeds it's composed of!
This page reviews some books, videos and ebooks on dog breeds and
provides some comments on finding out more on the internet. Near
the bottom of the page, I have a list of the most popular breeds.
Sometimes people will write about a breed as if all the dogs of
that breed have certain personality traits. In fact, it's more that
they have tendencies... in a breed known for aggression, there will
be shy dogs. In a breed known for being extremely active, there
will be full-time couch potatoes.
When you research a dog breed, find out about its typical size,
life span, trainability, and activity level, as well as any health
conditions the breed has problems with. How much grooming would
that dog breed require? What else can you find out about it?
Dog Breeds: Books
There are two kinds of books on dog breeds: the general ones covering
a lot of dog breeds, and the breed-specific ones, covering just
one.
General Dog Breed Books
 Choosing
a Dog for Life
My all-time favorite of the general dog breed books is Choosing
a Dog for Life, by Andrew de Prisco and James B. Johnson.
At first glance, the photographs attracted me. Where most books
on choosing a dog have one or at best two photos, this book has
a two-page spread on each of over 150 breeds. Each spread typically
has four or five full-color photos, showing both adults and puppies,
often with several dogs in one photo.
Moving on from the photos, the text about each breed covers:
-
Description: a succinct summary of what the dogs look like,
drawing in part on breed standards
-
Owner suitability: An interesting paragraph about typical personality
traits, exercise needs, suitability for children, and so on.
-
Growth: Litter size, comments on how the coat color develops,
training and socialization comments, and so on. I haven't seen
anything quite like this in any other choosing-a-dog book.
-
Health: Alerts you to potential problems, the serious and the
more everyday. For most breeds, an average life span is given.
Choosing a Dog for Life is a 380-page hardcover.
Since I keep books like these for years and often lend them out,
sturdy is good!
CHOOSING
A DOG FOR LIFE is available at Dogwise.
Choosing a Dog for Life is at Amazon too:
 The
American Kennel Club Complete Dog Book
This is the definitive reference book on breed standards for the
breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club. When I was a librarian,
we always had copies of this book, and they were frequently checked
out.
This book is essential for people who are deeply involved in the
world of dog showing and breeding, but people researching breeds
don't need it. I don't like it nearly as much as Choosing
a Dog for Life, because it says less about temperament.
Also, you need information about the pros and cons of any given
breed, and that isn't really the function of this book.
If you are researching a particular dog breed, you may want to
read the breed standard, but it should be available in some of the
books about that specific breed or online. If you are considering
a number of breeds and want their breed standards handy, then this
would be useful.
THE
AKC COMPLETE DOG BOOK is at Dogwise....
... and at Amazon.com:
For more general books on Choosing a
Dog, clicking this link takes you to a good list at Dogwise.
Specific Breed Books
Once you know specific breeds you are interested in, you can easily
find books on that breed searching Dogwise with this form.
Do be aware that TFH and perhaps some other publishing companies
publish books on specific breeds that have a lot of general dog
information and relatively little about the specific breed. I prefer
to stay away from these. Usually you can figure it out from the
description of the book.
If you see an AKC Manual for a breed you are interested in, my
comments about the AKC Complete Dog Book apply here too.
This is mainly for people interested in showing or breeding.
Dog Breeds: Internet Resources
If you are interested in a specific breed, use the search box
at the bottom of this page and type in the name of the breed. If
the name is more than one word, putting quotation marks before
and after the name will give you more precise results.
For just about any breed, this will bring up thousands of pages.
It's worth looking through the top 30 or more... you can right-click
on a link and open that page separately, still keeping the list
handy. I often have several pages opening at a time.
Because many dog owners don't have all that much website-creation
experience, many times the most interesting pages on a breed will
not be ranked at the top of Google's list. Once you start looking
at some of the pages you have opened, watch for links or webrings
which can lead you to still more pages. By the way, I wouldn't myself
buy a dog from the net without seeing it. But you can learn a tremendous
amount about a breed in a short time by surfing the net.
The American Kennel
Club website has some good general information, including
locations of dog shows. I was interested in a page that listed
the numbers of dogs registered with the AKC.
This is a good marker for how popular a dog is in general.
Here are the top 25 breeds in a recent year. They each had about
10,000 or more dogs registered in the US in that year. It's interesting
that dogs of all sizes rank in the top breeds.
1 Retrievers (Labrador)
2 Retrievers (Golden)
3 German Shepherd Dogs
4 Beagles
5 Dachshunds
6 Yorkshire Terriers
7 Boxers
8 Poodles
9 Chihuahuas
10 Shih Tzu
11 Miniature Schnauzers
12 Pomeranians
13 Rottweilers
14 Pugs
15 Spaniels (Cocker)
16 Shetland Sheepdogs
17 Boston Terriers
18 Bulldogs
19 Miniature Pinschers
20 Maltese
21 Siberian Huskies
22 Pointers (German Shorthaired)
23 Doberman Pinschers
24 Basset Hounds
25 Welsh Corgis (Pembroke)
Rosana's Ramblings:
So many breeds, so little time! I would have to live to at least
300 to live with one each of all the breeds that interest me. Since
that's not going to happen, I enjoy reading dog breed books and
internet web sites, so that I am more informed about the many breeds.
Some of my dogs have been mixed breed, and I find that knowing
about the various dog breeds comes in handy when I am trying to
understand their behavior. For example, our LarryDog (shown with
me in this box) is part Australian Cattle Dog (also called Blue
Heeler),and a conversation with a neighbor who has dogs of that
breed made me realize that some of Larry's quirks are actually
characteristic of the breed! |
|
