Breeds in our Classes

Pawsitive Pooches
2 days ago
3 min read

Number of dogs of each breed attending a Pawsitive Pooches class in the 18mths prior to October 2025

A few days ago we published the graphic above showing all the different breeds that have attended our classes in the last 18mths and asked all of our social media followers to guess what the three most common breeds were. We had lots of responses and they were very interesting.

The Results!

We had some excellent guesses too! Congratulations to Holly Emery on FB and @jukethedoggo on Instagram who both guessed correctly. The top three breeds attending classes are..... (drumroll) 🥁

🥉 In third place - Labrador Retrievers (8.7%), correctly guessed by only 4 people.

🥈 In second place - Cockerpoos (10%). 7 people guessed cockerpoo specifically with another 3 people guessing poodle mixes.

🥇 And in first place - the fabulous Cocker Spaniel (14.5%). Interestingly, only 3 people specifically guessed Cocker Spaniel, with another 9 people guessing Spaniels in general. See below for more on this.

We also had 16 German Shepherds, totalling just over 5%, so those of you who guessed German Shepherd weren't too far off as this breed holds 4th place

Does This Match Breed Ownership Statistics?

It's interesting to note that this in no way reflects breed ownership as a whole. Whilst there are no reliable surveys for how many of each type of dog are owned in the UK, there are surveys about people's favourite breeds, breed ownership surveys done with limited interest groups (such as one done by an agility toy manufacturer on social media that showed Border Collies as the top owned breed) and the Kennel Club registration survey released each year which only tracks registered pure bred dogs. Our results are also limited to pet dog owners who saw our posts or searched for a local class online.

Kennel Club registrations put Labradors at the top for new registrations in 2024, with over 34,000 pups registered, and cocker spaniel registrations at over 23,000 putting the in second place. French Bulldogs come in third with just short of 14,000 registrations in 2024, followed by mini Dachshunds at over 11,600 registrations

A Royal Veterinary College study of new puppies purchased in 2023 lists French Bulldogs at the top (7%), with Cockerpoos in 2nd place (6.2%), overtaking Labs and Jack Russells, though these two breeds were top for dogs of all ages, not just puppies, at 6.9% and 4.5% respectively and Cocker Spaniels in 3rd place at 4.3% and Staffies in 4th place at 4.2%. To put things in perspective, only 1.6% of dogs in our classes are Staffies or Staffie mixes and we had ZERO French Bulldogs and only 4 Jack Russell Terriers in our classes in the last 18mths.

Some Fun Facts

So with this in mind, here are some more interesting facts from our class attendance results!

🐕 Spaniels totalled almost 22% of all dogs attending classes - 14.5% were Cocker Spaniels, 4.2% were Springer Spaniels and 2.9% were Sprockers. Another 15% of the dogs were spaniel mixes, including 31 Cockerpoos, 5 Cavapoos, and 3 Springadors

🐕 The rarest breeds in our classes with just 1 of each attending in the last 18mths are:

German Shorthaired Pointer
Caucasian Shepherd
Bearded Collie
English Setter
Giant Schnauzer
Standard Schnauzer
Greyhound
Shiba Inu
Papillon
Rhodesian Ridgeback
Weimaraner
Welsh Terrier

🐕 30% of the dogs were mixed breeds, some designer mixes, some unknown mixes and some very unusual mixes. The most common are Cockerpoo (14.5%), Sprocker (2.9%) Labradoodle (2%) and Cavapoo (1.6%)

🐕 The most popular puppies in the UK, according to the Royal Veterinary College study in 2023, are French Bulldogs. We've had exactly ZERO French Bulldogs in our classes since we started recording breed data on bookings 18mths ago. We have had 1 Frenchie cross.

🐕 We had all three sizes of Schnauzer! 1 Giant Schnauzer, 1 Standard Schnauzer and 4 Miniature Schnauzers. But we only had one size of poodle... the Toy Poodle (we had 2 of those)!

🐕 Doodles that have attended include Labradoodles, Cockerpoos, Cavapoos, Irish Doodles, Golden Doodles and Double Doodles.

🐕 We had way more medium and large breed dogs than toy or small breed dogs in our classes too. This on its own is an interesting fact, as it is also the same for our one to one training sessions.