Which Country Has the Most Dogs?

Experts have conducted some studies in the hope of finding out which country has the most dogs.

However, these studies are usually carried out by pet food companies who are only concerned about the pets with owners who’ll buy the products they make. Because of that, finding reliable figures isn’t very easy. In today’s article, we’ll show you some data that we could find.

Can we find out for sure which country has the most dogs?

The world is very diverse and unequal. The Netherlands, for example, could probably give a fairly exact number of the dogs that live inside the country. That’s because this country no longer has a problem with stray dogs.

However, there are some countries that are ravaged by famines and wars that probably don’t even have accurate data about their human population, let alone their dogs.

From the different available data that we could find, it seems that there are about 500 million dogs around the world. According to the data from the American Pet Products Association, the USA is the country with the most dogs; there are 83.3 million living there.

However, we can’t ignore the fact that in China it’s estimated (since owners don’t have to register their pets) that there are 110 million domestic animals.

Figuring out which country has the most dogs isn’t an easy task, especially if statistics are from research carried out by pet food manufacturers. Today, we’ll show you some data about how many dogs live on the different continents of our planet.

Europe and dogs

In Europe, the European Federation of Food Manufacturers believes that there are about 75 million dogs that are kept as pets. We’ll give you some more information about them.

Among the European countries that have the largest number of barking friends are:

• Spain and Germany: 5.5 million
• France: 7.2 million
• Great Britain: 8.5 million
• Russia: 12.5 million

On the other hand, there are other countries that are part of the old continent that have fewer dogs. For example, Greece (660,000), Switzerland (440,000) and Estonia (180,000).

Latin America, a very skilled region

According to a study done on domestic animals, carried out by the GFK agency, about 56 percent of the world population has at least one pet. This research also points out that dogs are the preferred domestic animals in Latin America. In contrast, France and Russia, for example, are more inclined towards cats. 

Other interesting data from the GFK report showed that:

• Argentina is the country with the highest number of pets per inhabitant. 80 percent of respondents stated that they have a pet in their home. Of them, 66 percent prefer dogs.
• Mexicans (79%), Russians (73%) and the Americas (70%), closely follow behind the Argentinians in this regard. They prefer dogs to cats at 64, 58 and 50 percent, respectively.
• Among the countries that have the least number of pets are: South Korea (31%), Hong Kong (35%) and Japan (37%).

Some facts about dogs in Asia and Africa

Africa and Asia are, without a doubt and for several reasons, the continents where it’s most difficult to calculate the number of dogs.

• The World Society for the Protection of Animals believes that there are some 71,000 domestic dogs in Egypt, about 50,000 in Lebanon and another 32,000 in Saudi Arabia.
• The World Health Organization believes that there are about 78 million dogs that live in African territory. However, they state there may also be another 70 million dogs that have been abandoned.
• Other estimates indicated that in India there are about 32 million dogs in homes and another 20 million living on the streets.