Statistics sometimes serve a valuable role of putting "reality" into focus, and I was very interested in today's news story showing the AKC's annual list of the most popular dogs (as ranked by AKC registration). My main interest was from the perspective of The American Sporting Dog Alliance, in order to better understand where sporting dogs fit into the entire picture of American dog ownership.

For 2007, three sporting breeds ranked among the top 10 - Labrador retrievers were in first place on the list, golden retrievers were fourth and beagles came in at fifth. Cocker spaniels came in 17th (most of these dogs are pets, but some also are used for hunting and trials), German shorthaired pointers were 18th, springer spaniels were 27th, Brittanys were 29th, Weimaraners were 30th, vizslas were 42nd, Irish setters were 66th, German wirehaired pointers were 70th, Gordon setters were 91st, English setters were 93rd, and pointers were 106th. Individual registration data was not available on the AKC website.

Exact American Field (Field Dog Stud Book) data could not be located, but they reportedly register in excess of 11,000 pointer and setter litters a year. The FDSB also registers smaller numbers of several other breeds, and a growing percentage of FDSB-registered dogs also are cross-registered with the AKC. Data for the UKC and NKC registries was not available at this writing.

Here are AKC's actual LITTER registration numbers for 2007. The number in parenthesis is the actual number of 2006 individual registrations of dogs (2007 data was not available): 

In 2007, there were:

Labs - 41,132 litters ( 123,760 dogs registered)

Beagles - 15,969 litters (39,484 dogs registered)

Golden retrievers - 14,885 litters (42,962 dogs registered)

German shorthaired pointers - 3,550 litters (12,822 dogs registered)

English springer spaniels - 3,017 litters - (8,205 dogs registered)

Weimaraners - 2,816 litters ( 7,720 dogs registered)

Brittanys - 2,456 litters - ( 7,560 dogs registered)

Vizslas - 1,049 litters ( 3,509 dogs registered)

Those are just a few of the breeds used for hunting that are registered by the AKC, but you can see that a lot of sporting dogs are registered each year. That translates into a lot of people!

In terms of political clout, that force has not been successfully mobilized...but the potential is there! In spades!