About ForTheBreed

Dog breed information on the internet is, largely, useless. Every guide tells you the breed is "wonderful with children," "highly intelligent," and "makes an ideal family pet." That description fits about 60 different breeds. It tells you nothing about what it's actually like to own one.

ForTheBreed exists because the people behind it got tired of reading that the Dachshund is "lively and curious" without anyone mentioning the 25–40% lifetime risk of intervertebral disc disease, or that IVDD surgery starts at around £6,000. Or that a Beagle is "scent-driven" — not "occasionally distracted" — meaning it will follow a smell off a cliff and ignore everything you say until it's ready to stop. The websites don't tell you this stuff. We do.

Our approach

Data over adjectives. We use real UK figures: average puppy prices from current listings, pet insurance cost ranges from UK providers, vet treatment costs in pounds — not dollars, not vague "moderate expense" hedging. If a breed regularly costs £2,000–£4,000 a year to insure by age seven, that's in the guide.

Honest about health. Every breed has problems. We cover them proportionally — not buried at the bottom of the page after three paragraphs about how gentle they are. If a breed has a condition that affects a significant proportion of the population, you'll know before you start looking at puppies.

No fluff, no filler. We don't pad guides with sentences like "the [breed] has a long and distinguished history." We assume you care about the next 12 years of your life with this dog, not the next three minutes of reading.

Why trust us

Our breed profiles are cross-referenced against data from the Kennel Club, the PDSA, BVA health schemes, and breed-specific rescue organisations. Rescue orgs know things that breeders don't advertise — they see the dogs that didn't work out, and they're usually very direct about why.

We cover 200+ breeds. For each one, we update the guide when the underlying data changes — not on a publishing schedule, but when there's a reason to. If the KC publishes new health survey results or a breed moves significantly up or down the popularity rankings, the guide gets updated.

We don't accept sponsorships, paid placements, or affiliate deals with breeders or pet industry companies. Where we link to external resources, it's because they're useful. That's it.

The ForTheBreed team

ForTheBreed is written and maintained by a small UK-based group of dog owners, trainers, and breed enthusiasts. Between us we've owned everything from a Tibetan Mastiff to a Bedlington Terrier. We have had dogs that were exactly as described and dogs that were nothing like the guides suggested. Both experiences were instructive.

We don't publish under individual names because the site isn't a personal blog — it's a reference resource, and what matters is whether the information is accurate, not who wrote it. If something on the site is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it. That's the deal.

Contact & feedback

Found an error? Know something about a breed that contradicts what we've written? Have a question we haven't answered? We want to hear it.

Email: [email protected]
We read everything. We can't always reply individually, but errors and substantive corrections get acted on.

If you'd prefer to flag something publicly or track a correction, you can raise a GitHub issue.