What is the best family dog breed?
A year and a half ago, I got a dog. His name is Buxton and he is part St. Bernard and part Standard Poodle. He is a great dog and actually now registered as a service dog. He is friendly, was extremely easy to train, and barely sheds. Growing up, I had Rhodesian Ridgebacks. I love our Ridgebacks, however they are quite the opposite. They are protective, stubborn, and our male sheds an ungodly amount. This made me thing, what is the best family dog breed? Here, I will explore what the best family dog breeds using a data set containing information about many types of purebred dogs. This unfortunately means Buxton will not make the list.
The Data
The structured data for this analysis comes from github, and the secondary data comes from Reddit.
Dog data: This is the structured data for this analysis, and it contains a plethora of data about 277 breeds of dogs. This data originally came from here but has been changed to fit this analysis specifically.
Reddit data: This data was scraped from the subreddit, “dogs”, and it contains posts about many types of dogs.
Leonberger data: I had to scrape Reddit specifically for posts about Leonbergers to get more data about them.
Data dictionary: This is a data dictionary for the dog data.
Scary Dogs
Before I get too far into this, I wanted to debunk (or possible prove) a myth. Many people are afraid of big dogs. I think that smalls dogs are more to fear because in my experience they are often aggressive. I want to look at the size of the dog in comparison to their true personalities. In this graph, the closer the demeanor value is to 1, the friendlier the breed is on average.
This is not a representation of every dog, I filtered out some of the data from the smaller dogs because there is disproportionate amount of data for the smaller dogs. This graph does not seem to show a correlation, which means dogs of all sizes can be friendly!
Best Breeds
This next table is going to try to find the best breeds for families. It is going to take into account grooming frequency, how much they shed, how easy they are to train, and their demeanor. I am not taking into account how much energy each breed has, as some people want dogs with more energy and some want dogs with less.
| Breed | Score |
|---|---|
| Miniature American Shepherd | 3.6 |
| Leonberger | 3.4 |
| Cocker Spaniel | 3.2 |
| Labrador Retriever | 3.2 |
| Affenpinscher | 3.0 |
This is a really cool and interesting list. Mini American Shepherds are the same as Mini Australian Shepherds, the difference in name is just due to some AKC politics. I actually had one of these growing up and she was a great dog. Leonbergers are massive dogs and I was not expecting to see a breed this large on this list. The Labrador Retriever also made the list and they are considered the best family dogs. I was planning on eventually showing this list with only AKC registered dogs as they tend to have more information about them, however by chance all of these breeds are already AKC recognized!
Hipster Breeds
Since all of these breeds are AKC reconized, lets look at a similar list but only show dogs who are not AKC recognized. I call these hipster breeds because these are the breeds for families who want something a little less common.
| breed | score |
|---|---|
| Australian Kelpie | 2.8 |
| Teddy Roosevelt Terrier | 2.8 |
| American Leopard Hound | 2.6 |
| German Spitz | 2.6 |
| Norwegian Buhund | 2.6 |
These are the 5 best breeds for families not recognized by the AKC. In true hipster fashion, I have not heard of any of them. It is interesting that they score significantly lower than the AKC recognized breeds. It is important to note that there are essentially and infinite amount of breeds not AKC recognized, as any muts are not AKC recognized. These are just amongst the ones in this database.
Personalities
We now know what dogs are the best for families, but what are their personalities like? This is a list that shows a word cloud for each of the best family dogs using posts from the subreddit “dogs”. The bigger the word the more time it appears. These words are not directly correlated with personalities, as it can be anything that people were writing about. It should however give an idea of their personalities and how these dogs make their owners feel.
Mini American Shepherd
Unfortunately, for the #1 dog breed that I found, there is only 1 post in the subreddit talking about them. This post is about a condition they can sometimes have that is not exactly happy, so instead of a word cloud for the Mini American Shepherd, here is their description from the data used previously.
The Miniature American Shepherd shares many physical traits with its forebear the Australian Shepherd—only on a smaller scale. Females stand between 13 and 17 inches at the shoulder; males range from 14 to 18 inches. Despite their size, Minis are every inch a true herding dog: energetic, versatile, rugged, and extremely bright. The eye-catching coat comes in black, blue merle, red, and red merle. (The merle will exhibit in any amount marbling, flecks, or blotches.) Minis move with the smooth and agile step of a dog built for hard work on punishing terrain. The Miniature American Shepherd resembles a small Australian Shepherd. True herders in spite of their compact size, Minis are bright, self-motivated workers and endearingly loyal and lively companion dogs who have an affinity for horses.
Leonberger
Cocker Spaniel
Labrador Retriever
Affenpinscher
Unfortunately, this breed also only has one post about it and it is in a post about many breeds. Here is its description.
The Affen’s apish look has been described many ways. They’ve been called “monkey dogs” and “ape terriers.” The French say diablotin moustachu (“mustached little devil”), and Star Wars fans argue whether they look more like Wookies or Ewoks.Standing less than a foot tall, these sturdy terrier-like dogs approach life with great confidence. “This isn’t a breed you train,” a professional dog handler tells us, “He’s like a human. You befriend him.” The dense, harsh coat is described as “neat but shaggy” and comes in several colors; the gait is light and confident. They can be willful and domineering, but mostly Affens are loyal, affectionate, and always entertaining. Affen people say they love being owned by their little monkey dogs. The Affenpinscher: loyal, curious, and famously amusing; this almost-human toy dog is fearless out of all proportion to his size. As with all great comedians, it’s the Affenpinscher’s apparent seriousness of purpose that makes his antics all the more amusing.
The End
If you are looking for a dog, hopefully this helped you to make a decision. There are many great dog breeds out there, but these are some of the best.