Partial to a poodle? Loopy about labradors? Cuckoo for cocker spaniels? You are not alone, says Victoria Marston, as she discovers the nation’s favourite dog breeds, decade by decade
Set off for a walk around the country lanes and I wager £5 that you can’t make it home without spotting at least one labrador and tripping over a cocker spaniel or two (please note that I will not be honouring this bet). Take a turn around town and you will do well not to encounter a French bulldog; it is almost impossible to avoid crossing paths with a poodle-cross of some description.
A nation enchanted by dogs and the prospect of welcoming one (or 101) into our homes for the past century—before this, pet ownership was an unaffordable luxury for most, unless the animals were working dogs —we are also creatures of habit. It would appear that the more we are exposed to a particular breed, be it by family, neighbours or famous faces, the more the idea presents itself that we, too, must own one of these magnificent specimens. Kennel Club (KC) puppy registrations for the past decade bear witness to the fact that we are currently anation in thrall to the three dogs mentioned above (the poodle crossbreeds are not recorded, but statistics aren’t always needed to know something to be true). In fact, the six most popular pooches in the UK today account for more puppies than the other 216 breeds combined—no wonder some of our lesser-known dogs are in danger of falling off the radar entirely.
Looking back over the years, some of the usual modern-day suspects appear in the list of our favourite breeds time and again, but there are also a few more surprising entries. Who would have thought that the wire-haired fox terrier, a dog set to be added to the KC’s breeds at risk for the first time in its history, was once Britain’s top canine companion?
Dog of the decade 1920s
Top dogs of the 1920s
(by KC puppy registrations)
1. Wire-haired fox terrier (61,082)
2. German shepherd (32,824)
3. Airedale terrier (21,783)
‘A dog in a thousand’
In the first decade in which the KC had significant registration numbers, it was the wire-haired fox terrier that came out on top as Britain’s most-owned dog— despite the fact that, before 1920, the smooth-coated variety had been the more popular. It is widely reported that both Queen Victoria and Edward VII kept one (although there is some debate over the true breed of Edward’s little terrier, Caesar) and it was in 1929 that Tintin’s sidekick Snowy, a pure-white example, was ‘born’. Agatha Christie, whose first novel was published in 1920, dedicated two of her books to her own wire-haired fox terrier, Peter: ‘A dog in a thousand.’ One of these, Dumb Witness, even stars a wire-haired named Bob, which aids Poirot in his investigation.
