Which Dog Should I Get?

Most people choose a breed by looks, then try to fit their life around the dog. It works far better the other way round. These six things decide whether a dog will be happy in your home, and they are the six things the quiz above weighs most heavily.

1. Time alone

This is the question people most often get wrong. Dogs are social animals, and most should not be alone for more than about four to six hours at a stretch on a regular basis. If you work long days, plan a walker, daycare or a neighbour before you plan a breed, and lean towards a calm adult dog rather than a puppy. Our guide to how long a dog can be left alone has the age-by-age limits.

2. Energy and exercise

A Border Collie and a Basset Hound may weigh about the same, but one needs two hours of hard work a day and the other is happy with a slow sniff around the block. A dog with more energy than its family is the most common reason for chewing, barking and escaping. Be honest about an ordinary week, not your best one. The exercise calculator gives a sourced range for many breeds.

3. Space and noise

Size matters less than you might think. A calm Greyhound is a better apartment dog than a busy Jack Russell Terrier. What matters in an apartment is energy, barking and how well the dog settles indoors. Giant breeds do need room to turn around, and stairs are hard on long-backed breeds like Dachshunds and Corgis.

4. Allergies and shedding

Every dog produces allergens, so “hypoallergenic” really means “low-shedding”. Poodles, Bichon Frises, Maltese, Schnauzers and many doodles leave far less hair around the house. If anyone at home has allergies, spend time with the breed before you commit.

5. Grooming

Low-shedding coats do not fall out; they keep growing, so they mat without brushing and need a professional groom every four to eight weeks for life. Double-coated breeds like Huskies and German Shepherds shed heavily instead. Short, smooth coats are the easiest of all. Our grooming cost estimator prices a groom by size and coat.

6. Budget

Bigger dogs eat more and cost more at the vet, groomed coats add hundreds of dollars a year, and some breeds come with well-known health costs, such as breathing problems in flat-faced breeds or inherited heart disease. The next section shows what a typical first year costs.

A shelter or rescue is often the best place to start. Adult dogs there usually come house-trained, vaccinated and neutered, and their size, energy and personality are already known, which makes matching them to your home much easier than guessing with a puppy. Breed-specific rescues exist for almost every breed in this quiz, including doodles.

Mixed-breed dogs can be wonderful matches. Use your quiz results as a checklist of traits to look for (energy, size, coat, how they do alone) rather than a breed name you must find.

A responsible breeder makes sense if you need predictable traits, such as a low-shedding coat for allergies. A good breeder health-tests the parents for the conditions common in the breed, lets you meet at least the mother, asks you as many questions as you ask them, and will take the dog back at any age. Be wary of anyone who always has puppies ready, will not show you where they are raised, or sells online with shipping.

Whichever route you take, each breed card in the quiz lists the health problems to ask about. Our shelter statistics page shows how many dogs enter US shelters each year.

Zooming Paws started as a grooming business in Naperville, Illinois, and the single most common surprise we saw on the grooming table was a doodle or other low-shedding dog that had matted down to the skin. Those fluffy coats tangle underneath while looking fine on top. Once a coat is matted tight, the kindest option is usually to shave it short and start again.

If you want a low-shedding breed, budget for it properly: brushing right down to the skin several times a week at home, and a professional groom every four to eight weeks. For a Goldendoodle-sized dog that is roughly nine visits a year, and a full groom for a large dog runs about $110 to $200 a visit. Keeping the coat in a short “puppy cut” makes home care much easier.

Double-coated breeds, like Huskies, German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers, are the opposite problem: heavy shedding, especially in spring and fall. A deshedding bath at each seasonal blow-out helps a lot. Please do not shave a double coat to stop shedding; it protects the dog from heat as well as cold and does not always grow back properly.

Whatever you choose, get your puppy used to having its feet, ears and mouth handled from the first week. A dog that is relaxed about nail trims is cheaper, safer and much happier to groom for the rest of its life.

The quiz scores 106 breeds and popular crosses on 16 traits: energy, shedding, grooming, trainability, how they do with children, cats and other dogs, barking, time alone, apartment fit, heat and cold tolerance, guarding, first-owner friendliness, drool and prey drive.

First, a few hard rules remove breeds that would be a poor or unsafe fit: only low-shedding breeds if someone has allergies, no breeds that are often poor with cats if you have one, none that are often impatient with toddlers if you have children under six, and none with very strong prey drive if you keep small pets. Then every remaining breed is scored on how well it fits each answer, weighted by how much that answer matters. The match percentage is that weighted score, capped at 97%.

Adult weights and lifespans are the typical ranges published in breed standards and breed-club guides; crosses have no standard and vary more. The trait ratings are our own editorial ratings, written for this site from breed-club descriptions and our grooming experience. They describe breeds, not individual dogs. First-year costs use the sources below.