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Dog Breed Comparison
Can't decide which breed is perfect for you? Our tool provides an easy way to compare dog breeds side by side and find out the perfect breed for your lifestyle!
We've covered all dog breeds and all dog groups, including breeds in companion, herding, hound, hybrid, mixed breed, sporting, terrier, and working groups.
You can compare purebred breeds recognized by American Kennel Club, but also the other breeds, mostly crossbreeds, that are (still) not recognized by AKC but gaining popularity lately.
To create the most comprehensive dog breed comparisons, we’ve included a lot of parameters that will help you choose the breed that will be the best fit for your lifestyle and expectations.
These parameters and traits include:
Dog Breed Size and Group
There are eight dog breed groups Companion, Herding, Hound, Hybrid, Mixed breed, Sporting, Terrier, and Working group. In the very beginning, it's important to compare dog breed groups, as each group has its own characteristics.
Working dogs are typically athletic and energetic, so they're best suited for activities like tracking, hunting, and protection work. They may also be used as service animals or therapy dogs.
Companion dogs are some of the most popular breeds out there today—they're generally friendly, calm, and quiet. This makes them ideal as pets for people who want a companion animal who will love them unconditionally but won't require a lot of exercise or training time!
Herding dogs have a natural instinct to herd livestock or other animals by nipping at their heels or barking at them to move in the direction that their owner wants them to go (which is great if you have a large flock of chickens!).
And so on...
After you've found out the dog breed groups, dog breed comparison continues with the information on their size. This includes breeds’ average height and weight.
Some people prefer small dogs, even breeds from toy group, while others love large dog breeds. This tool will help you compare two dog breeds based on their size.
Dog Size Comparison Chart
We understand that plain numbers don't tell the whole story, and aren't sometimes the best way to compare dog size.
Therefore, each article contains a dog size comparison chart that will help you visualize and compare their size, but also compare them to a human.
This is what our dog breed size comparison to a human looks like, in this example, French Bulldog and Labrador Retriever are compared:
You will also find out if breeds belong to the same dog breed group or not.
Dog Breed Life Span
Unfortunately, dogs live much shorter than humans. How long a dog will live depends on many factors, including its genetics, nutrition, and activity level. However, the dog breed plays a crucial role in its life expectancy.
Large dogs tend to live longer than small dogs. Smaller dogs tend to have more issues with their health as well.
For example, Bernese Mountain Dogs’ life expectancy is only 7 years, due to their small gene pool which could cause various health issues. But don’t let this fret you, there are a lot of BMDs living much longer, even 12 or 13 years.
On the other side, Golden Retrievers' average life span is 12 years, while Chihuahuas are often considered a breed that is living the longest, with an average life span of whopping 17 years.
Dog Breed Adaptability
Breeds’ adaptability is compared based on 6 factors:
- How do they adapt to apartment living? Some breeds are great pets for apartments, while others are prone to undesired behavior when living in apartments.
- Are they a good choice for novice owners? This one is important for novice owners. They definitely don’t want a stubborn dog that’s very difficult to train.
- Sensitivity level. If you’re looking for a caring dog with a sensitive soul, be sure to check this section.
- How do they tolerate being alone? Some breeds are doing fine when left alone at home for several hours, while others could really suffer or start showing undesired behavior, due to boredom or simply because they love to show their affection to owners.
- How do they tolerate cold weather? If you’re living in a properly cold climate, it makes a lot of sense to choose a breed that won’t only tolerate cold weather well, but enjoy it. For example, Siberian Husky or Alaskan Malamute will love being outside even if it’s freezingly cold. Moreover, these two breeds are well known for their agility and are considered sled dogs.
- How do they tolerate hot weather? Well, you’ve got it. Some breeds simply don’t tolerate warm weather at all (eg French Bulldog), while some breeds, like Great Dane, wouldn’t mind high temperatures.
Dog Breed Temperament
Well, this one is tricky.
Each dog has a different temperament, and it depends on its innate temper, training, socialization, living conditions, and other factors.
However, dog friendliness is very important, so we’ve tried to summarize if dogs belonging to a certain breed are affectionate with family and how they behave with kids.
Also, you’ll be able to read how breeds compare when it comes to behavior with other dogs.
And last, but not least, we’ve explained their friendliness (or unfriendliness maybe?!) toward strangers - are they good or bad guard dogs.
Overall, your dog's temperament is partially determined by genetics. Your dog inherits his temperament from his parents.
If one of the parents had a high energy level then that trait will be more prominent in the puppy. The puppy's personality might also be influenced by how he was raised.
Puppies that are bred to be pets need to learn certain things in order to behave in a manner that is appropriate for life as a pet—considering that pets don't have to hunt for survival.
If certain situations aren't properly attended to during early development you might end up with a dog that bites or barks excessively—or one that won't stop jumping up on people.
Dog Breed Health and Grooming Needs
Each breed has its predispositions for certain diseases. In other words, each breed has an increased risk for some conditions and diseases. In this section, you’ll see how the breed’s overall health is.
Canine obesity is an important risk factor for developing diseases like type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, heart, and respiratory disease. Overweight dogs also live shorter, and their life expectancy is decreased up to 2.5 years.
That’s why we’ve included proneness to weight gain in the comparison. Of course, you shouldn’t cross out a breed from your wishlist, but be careful with portion size.
In this section, we’ve included some grooming traits, including:
- Amount of shedding
- Drooling potential
- How much is the breed easy to groom overall
It's probably needless to say, but all dogs shed. Some of them are shedding really a lot, like Great Pyrenees, while some breeds including Bichon Frise are known for low-shedding characteristics.
This might be very useful to people with allergies, who might want to avoid breeds that shed a lot, and choose some of the breeds that don’t shed (or shed just a little bit), like Poodles.
When it comes to drooling, this is pretty self-explanatory. Boxers are very well known for their drooling potential, and if you can't stand drooling, take a close look at this section of dogs comparison.
Dog Breed Trainability
This is an important part of breed comparison. In this section, we didn’t cover just breed trainability (is the breed easy to train), but also some other important traits.
- Intelligence. Dog working intelligence is an important trait for some people that will have certain tasks for their dogs. Dog’s ability to follow commands, react appropriately to human body language such as gesturing and pointing, and understand human voice commands are closely related to its intelligence. The German Shepherd Dog is a great example of a very smart dog breed.
- Potential for mouthiness. Mouthiness in dogs could be a good or bad thing; for example, if you are looking for a guard or watchdog, you definitely want a dog that will bark a lot. On the other hand, excessive barking usually isn’t desirable when you are looking for a family dog that will live in an apartment.
- Prey Drive. Some dog breeds have a strong prey drive, especially hunting dogs like Beagles. It's not necessarily a bad thing - hunters want breeds with a strong prey drive, but ordinary dog owners might want to avoid breeds that will instinctively start to find, pursue and capture prey, or something they consider the prey.
- Tendency to bark or howl. Similar to the potential for mouthiness, this part of dog breeds comparison will help you understand how vocal breeds you are comparing are. Some breeds are highly vocal, others have unusual sounds, and some are silent.
- Wanderlust potential. Breeds like Dachshunds are free-spirited, and will easily take off after anything that catches their attention. That said, dog breeds with wanderlust potential will need some extra training to keep them from getting away. This is especially important to think about if you plan to walk your dog off the leash, or if you have a yard.
Dog Breed Physical Needs
The last part of the dog comparison is about breeds' physical needs and traits.
We’re comparing both energy levels and intensity breed needs, and overall exercise needs, so you can paint the whole picture and decide if you have enough time to provide your new pet.
Besides these traits, you’ll find if these breeds have the potential for playfulness.
This information should be more than enough to understand what these breeds require to stay healthy and happy.
Some breeds are lazy and don’t need (and some even don’t want) a lot of exercises, like Basset Hounds, while others need more than just regular walks (Border Collie, for example).
Conclusion
This tool lets you compare dog breeds, or more precisely, it will let you search our huge database of dog breed comparisons.
When we say huge database, we really think that. You can choose from 392 breeds to compare, which makes more than 76,000 dog breed comparison articles.
As you can see, we’ve covered almost all aspects of one dog breed. We believe it’s important to choose the breed wisely; it’ll make your life happier and easier, but also help you keep your dog healthy and happy as well.
Our team at Barking Royalty hopes this tool will help you find your best dog, and after using our dog breeds compare tool we advise you to contact some reputable breeders or vets to hear their thoughts if you picked the right dog breed.
Featured Dog Breeds Comparisons
Some dog breed comparisons are ever-green. Here are 10 comparisons hand-picked by our editors to start with.
Frequently Compared Dog Breeds
Below you'll see the ten most commonly compared dog breeds.
Prefer cats? Check out our sister site, Meowing Royalty, that allows you to compare cat breeds.
