What Is the Rarest Dog Breed?

Determining the rarest dog breed in the world is a challenging task because of the difficulty of obtaining and analyzing reliable data. Different sources give differing information. According to the American Kennel Club, which tracks some 200 breeds, the rarest breed, ranking 197 out of 197 in popularity, is the Norwegian Lundehund. This dog was initially bred in Norway in the Middle Ages for the specific job of hunting puffins, a bird found in Iceland and northern Norway. There are an estimated 1,200–1,400 Lundehunds alive in the world today.

The American Kennel Club, however, doesn’t track or recognize every dog breed in the world, which means there are other breeds that are contenders for the title. Some of the most commonly named extremely rare breeds are the Chinook (a thick-coated dog bred for sledding), the otterhound (one of the rarest scent hound breeds), the Azawakh (a West African dog resembling a Greyhound), and the Xoloitzcuintli or Mexican hairless dog. These extremely rare breeds have estimated numbers in the hundreds or low thousands.