Small Dog Breeds

Common questions

What counts as a small dog?

There is no official line. Registries group breeds by the job they were bred for, not by size, so the Toy group is the closest thing to a definition and it leaves out plenty of genuinely small dogs: the Bichon Frise, the Miniature Schnauzer and the Boston Terrier are all registered elsewhere. This table draws its own line at a typical adult top weight of 30 lb, which gives 46 breeds, and the weight control then caps that at 10 lb, 15 lb or 25 lb. The cap reads against the top of the range, so a breed listed at 12 to 18 lb survives a 25 lb cap and not a 15 lb one. Twenty-six of the 46 have a top weight of 15 lb or under.

How does the small dog breed table work?

Each of the 46 rows gives the breed's weight range, its height range, its coat, how much that coat is described as dropping, how much the breed moves, and whether it is commonly described as adapting to a flat. Cap the weight at 10, 15 or 25 lb, keep the low-shedding coats, sort by weight, height or A to Z, or search a word such as terrier, white or curl, and the count above the table says how many breeds are left. The search reads each breed's name, registry group, coat and description. Every figure is a typical adult range taken from published breed-standard descriptions, and the page only filters and sorts: it never picks a breed for you.

Which small dog breeds shed the least?

Twenty-five of the 46 rows are marked low, and they fall into two shapes. One is the coat that keeps growing rather than cycling and dropping: long in the Maltese, the Yorkshire Terrier, the Havanese, the Coton de Tulear, the Shih Tzu and the Silky Terrier, and curly in both sizes of Poodle. The other is the harsh wire coat of the working terriers: the Norfolk, the Norwich, the Cairn, the Scottish, the West Highland White, the Border and the Miniature Schnauzer, plus the curly Bichon Frise. At the other end, the double-coated spitz types drop the most: the Pomeranian, the Shiba Inu, the Schipperke, the American Eskimo Dog and the Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Set the shedding control to Low and the table shows you all of them at once. Low shedding here is a statement about hair, and nothing more: this page carries no health claim of any kind.

Which are the smallest dog breeds in the table?

Eleven rows top out at 10 lb or under: the Chihuahua at 3 to 6 lb, the Pomeranian at 3 to 7, the Toy Fox Terrier at 3.5 to 7, the Toy Poodle at 4 to 6, the Maltese and the Yorkshire Terrier at 4 to 7, then the Papillon, the toy American Eskimo Dog, the Affenpinscher, the Miniature Pinscher and the Silky Terrier at up to 10. Set the weight cap to 10 lb and under, sort by weight, and that is the whole list, lightest first. Ten of the eleven are registered in the Toy group, the registry group for companion and lap breeds; type toy into the search box to see its 20 rows, plus the toy size of the American Eskimo Dog. Teacup is a seller's word rather than a breed or a size any breed standard describes, so no row in the table is a teacup dog.

Which small breeds are fluffy?

Fluffy is not a word breed standards use, so read the coat column instead. The long coats are the Maltese, the Yorkshire Terrier, the Havanese, the Coton de Tulear, the Shih Tzu, the Lhasa Apso, the Pekingese and the Papillon, plus the long-coated varieties of the Chihuahua and the Miniature Dachshund. The silky coats of the Silky Terrier, the Japanese Chin, the Tibetan Spaniel and the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel come next. The coats that stand off the body are the Pomeranian and the toy American Eskimo Dog, and the Bichon Frise is the curly powder puff. Of those, the Pomeranian and the American Eskimo Dog are marked high shedding, so add the shedding control if that matters.

Which small breeds have curly or short coats?

Four rows describe a curl in the coat: the Bichon Frise, the Toy Poodle, the Miniature Poodle and the Bedlington Terrier, whose crisp coat tends to curl. Searching curl finds them, along with three breeds whose tail curls rather than their coat. The short, smooth coats are the Basenji, the Beagle, the Boston Terrier, the French Bulldog, the Italian Greyhound, the Toy Manchester Terrier, the Miniature Pinscher, the Pug, the Rat Terrier and the Toy Fox Terrier, and the Chihuahua, the Miniature Dachshund, the Russell Terrier and the Brussels Griffon each have a smooth variety. The Basenji and the Italian Greyhound are the two rows with only a short coat that are marked low shedding, and the Brussels Griffon, also marked low, comes in a smooth variety as well as a rough one.

Can I search for small white dog breeds or other colors?

Yes, where the breed standard fixes the color. Searching white returns five rows: the Maltese, the Bichon Frise, the Coton de Tulear, the West Highland White Terrier and the toy American Eskimo Dog, all white by their standards. Searching black and tan returns the Toy Manchester Terrier and the Welsh Terrier, and blue and tan returns the Yorkshire Terrier and the Silky Terrier. Many breeds come in several colors, the Poodles, the Pomeranian, the Havanese and the Chihuahua among them, and the table does not list every color a breed allows, so a color search only finds the breeds whose standard names one.

Which small breeds are usually described as calm indoors?

Four rows carry a low energy mark: the French Bulldog, the Japanese Chin, the Pekingese and the Shih Tzu. Add a 15 lb cap on top of that and two are left, the Japanese Chin and the Pekingese, because the French Bulldog runs to 28 lb and the Shih Tzu to 16. Set energy to Low and Moderate together and the list opens up to most of the table, since the majority of small breeds are described somewhere in the middle. The five rows not marked as adapting to a flat are the working terriers and the scent hound: the Beagle, the Border Terrier, the Russell Terrier, the Welsh Terrier and the Rat Terrier.

Where do these small breeds come from?

From Germany come the Affenpinscher, the Miniature Pinscher, the Miniature Schnauzer and the Dachshund. From Japan, the Japanese Chin and the Shiba Inu. From China and Tibet, the Pekingese, the Pug, the Shih Tzu, the Lhasa Apso and the Tibetan Spaniel. Most of the terriers are British, from the Yorkshire, Norfolk and Norwich Terriers to the Scottish, Cairn and Welsh. Further afield are the Havanese from Cuba, the Coton de Tulear from Madagascar, the Basenji from central Africa, the Silky Terrier from Australia and the Boston Terrier from the United States.

Are poodle crosses or medium breeds in the table?

No. A cross such as a Cockapoo or a Maltipoo has no breed standard, so there is no typical adult range to quote, and the figures would be a guess. The breeds those crosses come from are rows here: both Poodles, the Maltese, the Bichon Frise, the Shih Tzu and the Yorkshire Terrier among them. Medium breeds are outside the line this table draws at a typical top weight of 30 lb, so a small to medium list is not something this page can give.

Why can a dog be outside the range for its breed?

Because a breed standard describes a breed and an individual is not a description. The ranges here are what published descriptions give for a typical adult, and real dogs land inside them, at the edges of them, and outside them. Weight moves with age and with the individual animal, height is measured at the withers rather than the top of the head, and a mixed-breed dog is not bound by any of it. Read a range as the middle of a distribution, not as a limit.

Does this page recommend a breed?

No, and that is deliberate. It filters and it sorts, and it stops there: there is no score, no match percentage and no verdict. Which dog belongs in a particular home turns on how much room there is, who else lives there, how much time there is in a day and a dozen other things a web page cannot see, so a page that ranked breeds for you would be inventing the part that matters. The same rule keeps health, feeding and training claims off the page entirely. What the table can do is answer the comparison question quickly: which small breeds are actually under 15 lb, which are actually low-shedding, and how they line up side by side.

Is anything uploaded?

No. The breed table ships with the page, so the filtering and sorting happen in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. Your filters and sort order are remembered in your own browser's local storage so the page opens the way you left it, and clearing your browser data clears them.