Posts tagged with "American Kennel Club"

Above, the French Bulldog takes the number-one spot, curtailing the Labrador Retriever’s 31-year run. (Photo source: American Kennel Club)

Top dogs: The AKC’s most popular breeds of 2022

March 16, 2023

The numbers are in! As the world’s largest registry of purebred dogs, the American Kennel Club uses its registration statistics to rank the most popular breeds nationwide of the past year. And in 2022, one breed broke all of the records: For the first time in history, the French Bulldog ascended to AKC’s number-one spot. This ends the Labrador Retriever’s 31-year reign as the most popular dog breed in America.

 

Indeed, the AKC notes, the French Bulldog has moved into the number-one position after climbing the ranks in popularity over the last ten years. In 2012, the Frenchie was ranked at number 14. Since then, registrations have increased by over 1,000%, bringing this playful breed to the top. French Bulldogs held the number-two spot in 2021.

 

Breaking the Lab’s top-dog status of over three decades is no small feat. The Frenchie is a smart, compact breed, and they can fit into various different lifestyles, perfect for people all across the country. This petite dog was first recognized by the AKC in 1898; they are beloved by everyone from families to single owners for their charming and adaptable nature. They have surged in popularity in cities across the country since their small size and generally quiet demeanor make them good fits for apartments and smaller homes.

 

Top five dog breeds of 2022

Aside from this massive move, the top five list looks a bit familiar. The Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever, German Shepherd Dog, and Poodle took ranks two through five, respectively.

 

Bulldogs placed at number six; while Rottweilers moved up one spot—from number eight to number seven—and the Dachshund bumped the German Shorthaired Pointer from number nine in 2021 to number ten in 2022. Beagles placed at number eight.

 

Other breeds that made major jumps from 2021 to 2022 are the American Hairless Terrier, the Gordon Setter, the Italian Greyhound, and the Anatolian Shepherd Dog.

 

What’s more, over the past ten years, breeds like the Cane Corso, Belgian Malinois, Giant Schnauzer, and English Cocker Spaniel have been making their way up the rankings in popularity, as well.

 

Newly recognized by the AKC in 2022, the Mudi and Russian Toy debuted at numbers 150 and 144, respectively—not bad for their first year! The Bracco Italiano became the 200th breed fully recognized by the AKC in July 2022; as a result, it will debut in the registration rankings for 2023.

 

Least popular dog breeds of 2022

At the bottom of the list (numbers 197 through 199) are the Sloughi, the Norwegian Lundehund, and the English Foxhound. Last year, the Norwegian Lundehund was at the bottom, but they have surpassed English Foxhounds in registration over the past year. English Foxhounds, like their American Foxhound cousins, were bred as agile, scent-driven hunting dogs.

 
Worldwide favorites

As for the most popular breeds in other countries worldwide, based on Google searches, the Pug rules in Guatamala; the Australian Shepard, in France; the Border Collie in Belgium, Iceland, Israel, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia, the Golden Retriever, in Luxembourg, India, and Canada; the Doberman, in Russia and Lithuania; the Labradoodle, in The Netherlands, the Great Dane, in the Bahamas; the Rhodesian Ridgeback, in Bostwana; the German Shephard, in Germany, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Latvia; and the Cockapoo, in the United Kingdom.

 

Research contact: @akcdoglovers 

Above, the Humane Society is working with the DOJ and animal welfare partners, including Homeward Trails, to find homes for the rescued beagles. (Photo source: Sue Bell for Homeward Trails)

4,000 beagles rescued from Virginia breeding facility are in need of new homes

July 14, 2022

Thousands of beagles are being rescued from a dog breeding facility in Virginia—and they’re in need of new homes, reports Fox News.

The Humane Society of the United States announced on July 7 that about 4,000 beagles will be removed from Envigo, a medical contract breeding facility that has been accused of having unfit conditions.

Envigo’s facility in Cumberland, Virginia, was taken to court in 2021 after the USDA and other law enforcement agencies found multiple federal violations.

In a filed complaint with the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Virginia, adult and puppy beagles were said to be underfed, injured, and sick. The dogs were reportedly kept in small spaces where feces piled up.

The complaint also alleged that the dogs received inadequate medical care and were subject to painful medical science experiments. Court records stated that more than 300 puppies died at the facility between January and July of last year.

In June 2022, Envigo’s parent company, Inotiv, publicly announced it plans to shutter the facility.

The Humane Society says it worked with the United States Department of Justice to develop a transfer plan that will move the remaining beagles to adoption facilities around the country.

“At this time, we are connecting with our shelter and rescue partners and preparing to take on the monumental process of securing placement for these dogs,” the Humane Society wrote in a statement, on July 7.

“The transfer plan was jointly submitted to the Court for approval by Envigo, the Department of Justice, and the Humane Society of the United States,” the statement continued. “Now that the Court has approved the joint transfer plan, we and our partners are preparing to move quickly to place these beagles in loving homes.”

Homeward Trails Animal Rescue, a nonprofit animal welfare group in Fairfax Station, Virginia, is one local shelter that’s taking in some of the rescued beagles.

The group previously rescued 475 beagles from the facility.

This time around, Homeward Trails will facilitate the transfer of another 1,500 beagles to partner organizations. “We hope to start this process around July 19th,” Homeward Trails’ Executive Director Sue Bell wrote in an email to Fox News Digital.

Beagles are a hound group dog that’s said to be “friendly,” “curious” and “merry,” according to the American Kennel Club. The breed is a small one that can grow up to 15 inches in height and weigh up to 30 pounds. They have a 10- to 15-year life expectancy and tend to be affectionate with family and well-behaved with children and other dogs.

Melissa McWilliams, the chief development direcort of the Beagle Freedom Project—a nonprofit animal rescue organization headquartered in Valley Village, California, told Fox News Digital that the rescued beagles will require special care, much like other rescued lab animals.

“Even though these animals were liberated before they were sold to testing facilities, they still have trauma and behaviors that are foreign to many families opening up their homes to these animals,” McWilliams said. “For these purpose-bred beagles, they have never received a kind touch, nutritious food or even a treat, had an opportunity to play, or know what grass feels like.”

She continued, “These beagles can be extremely fearful, especially in the first few weeks outside the breeding facility, which is overwhelming for many unprepared families because they require so much care and attention. Patience is the most important part of their healing process.”

McWilliams said potential foster and adoptive families will need to put in extra time for potty training, socializing (with humans and dogs), finding the right dog food, securing their home, and staying up to date on veterinary care.

Beagle Freedom Project has created a Care Guide for Envigo Beagles document that breaks down everything potential dog owners need to know about the special needs that lab dogs have.

Research contact: @FoxNews

Above, Benny takes to the ice. (Photo source: Rick Vierkandt/Bark Gallery)

Cold paws, warm heart: Benny, an eight-year-old Labrador retriever, is ice skating for charity

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December 13, 2021

An ice-skating dog from Las Vegas is among this year’s recipients of the American Kennel Club’s Award for Canine Excellence, reports People magazine.

Benny, an eight-year-old Labrador retriever owned by Cheryl DelSangro, was named the American Kennel Club’s 2021 Exemplary Companion for his work with the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights and various local charities.

Indeed, Benny first gained popularity through his appearances at Golden Knights hockey games at the T-Mobile Arena, where he dazzles crowds on his pair of custom skates.

The idea began in August 2018 with photographer Rick Vierkandt, who asked DelSangro if her dog would partake in a cheer video for the Golden Knights, per the American Kennel Club (AKC). In the clip, Benny holds a hockey stick in his mouth and prances around the ice while chasing pucks.

After watching the video, a lightbulb went off in DelSangro’s head. “I started to think I could teach him to skate. I taught our daughter when she was 17 months old, and I figured Benny had better balance than a toddler,” the retired ice skater told the AKC. 

In no time, Benny found his footing on the ice. DelSangro told the AKC that no one expected the Labrador to learn to skate on his first try, let alone love the activity.

After the stunning discovery, DelSangro designed Benny a set of special skates, which a friend of hers helped sculpt, using an altered dog boot at the top of the shoe.

Since his first time on skates, Benny has made impressive progress. The pup showed off his various skills in clips posted to YouTube by Bark Gallery in January, including his effortless transition out of a lying-down position, turning corners, and stopping on his own.

“He no longer goes front to back with his skates but pushes out to the sides,” DelSangro explained to the AKC. “Also, he has taught himself to stop, with a reverse snowplow move. He has also learned to skate in reverse a short distance. To a major degree, he is self-taught.”

When he isn’t skating for the Golden Knights, Benny is skating for charity with Spectrum on Ice, an ice-skating program for children with autism and other developmental disabilities.

“He’s like a magnet for the kids, and creates an instant comfort zone,” DelSangro told the AKC. “As one mom told me with tears in her eyes, her son had never touched an animal but petted Benny on the ice, and with a smile on his face, followed him around. That put everything in perspective for me.”

She adds, “He especially relates to children who may have to skate or learn differently, like he does,” she explained. “They know he doesn’t judge or care how they skate, just that he sees how excited and happy they are when he is with them.”

This year, four other dogs received ACE awards out of nearly 1,000 applicants, per the AKC. Each recipient receives $1,000 for a pet-related charity of their choice, a one-year supply of Eukanuba dog food, and an engraved silver medallion.

Research contact: @people

Bow-WOW: Talent seems to be just as much a gift in dogs as it is in people

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July 19, 2021

Whether it’s seeing a child take only a few seconds to learn Mary had a Little Lamb on the piano, experiencing getting wiped out by a much better player in a pickup basketball game, or witnessing someone’s encyclopedic memory while they rattle off statistics about geography, humans see natural talent every day.

Now, a study seeking the origin of “natural talent” in dogs has been published in Nature. What it found: Just as in humans, some particular pooches display more innate talent than others do.

According to The Good News Network, this story has a lot to do with border collies—a dog species that the authors of the study note has been bred for herding sheep and, therefore, has had to be extra-cognizant of owners’ calls, instructions, and whistles.

The American Kennel Club reported last year on a border collie named Chaser, who had 1,022 toys and knew the individual names of every on; while Science reported on one named Rico who knew the names of 200 toys and could very quickly retrieve those for which he had no name by using exclusion learning and inference at about the level of a three-year-old child.

Locating 34 dog owners across the globe using social media, researcher  Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest decided to test whether the pooches could attach specific names to all the toys they played with, and be able to recognize and respond to those names immediately.

Of those 34 dogs, only one border collie succeeded—a young female named Olivia, who sadly died of health complications before the trial could be finished.

But the work continues: “[W]e decided to set up a study in which both puppies and adult naïve dogs are systematically and intensively trained for learning at least two object names over a three-month period, and we used a strictly controlled testing method to assess the dogs’ learning outcome every month from the start of the training,” wrote Fugazza in her paper.

In this study, each month, a scientist visits a dog’s house and tests to see if he or she can retrieve an object based on it name. As each dog succeeds, another word is added.

Perhaps the surprising thing is that of the 34 dogs, 19 were border collies, and 18 of them failed to learn a single name. Also interesting was that, outside of the study, their same research method found that six border collies that could already learn names could continue to learn more.

The hypothesis was that some dogs with certain neurological plasticity owing to either early-life training or breed-activity would have better abilities.

However, the dogs learned the names of toys “irrespectively of the age of the subjects and despite intensive training,” the researchers wrote, concluding by saying that “while a few rare individuals can rapidly master multiple object names, we suggest that the capacity to learn object-names in dogs shows analogies with exceptional performance (talent) in humans.”

It seems that it’s just as hard to find out why Mozart was Mozart as it is to find out why Chaser the border collie was Chaser the border collie.

Research contact: @goodnewsnetwork

Wanted: 10,000 dogs for the largest-ever study on canine aging

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November 18, 2019

Every dog has his day—but they simply don’t get enough of them as far as we’re concerned. Most of our beloved pooches only live for about 11 years, according to the American Kennel Club.

But now, a group of researchers is hoping to lengthen the life expectancy of canines, as well as their overall quality of life, CNN reports.

Teams from the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVM), are being funded by the National Institute of Aging, a division the National Institutes of Health.

The study promises to be the largest-ever study on aging in dogs, according to the cable news outlet—and it may have implications for humans, too. .

“Dogs truly are science’s best friends,” the research team told CNN in a joint statement. “Though they age more rapidly than humans, they get the same diseases of aging, have a rich genetic makeup, and share our environment.”

“By studying aging in dogs,” they said, “we can more quickly expand our knowledge of aging not just in dogs but also in humans.” They added that the team is optimistic that its findings could lead to better

Dogs from all 50 states—and of all ages, sizes, and breeds—may apply with the help of their owners. The researchers will even consider dogs with chronic illnesses, because they are hoping to include as much genetic diversity as possible.

Applications to the project are officially open. Owners can visit the Dog Aging Project’s website to nominate their pooches. The submission process takes less than ten minutes, and generally consists of questions about your pet that will help the researchers to determine whether he or she is the right fit.

Have more questions? Here’s a helpful FAQs.

Research contact: @CNN