Should Dog Breeds Be Capitalized?

Suppose you are writing about a dog – or even to your favorite dog – and need to mention a type or breed. Should the dog name be capitalized?

This is a common question in American English for a couple of reasons. First, because dogs are a big part of our lives, they can appear frequently in writing. And second, even if you understand the rules, they seem to be applied inconsistently.

With that in mind, let’s see if we can get to the bottom of the issue.

When You Wouldn’t Usually Capitalize: Dog Types

Many dog-type names are descriptive. For example, retriever is a type of dog. In that context, we would lowercase the word, as in I have a retriever.  We also would not capitalize retriever in an exchange such as:

“What’s your favorite kind of dog?”

“I really like retrievers.”

It’s possible you’ve seen dog types in similar references capitalized anyway. That brings us to a couple of distinctions.

When You Would Normally Capitalize: Dog Breeds

Within dog types are dog breeds, which we would often capitalize. For example, where retriever is a type of dog, specific breeds of that dog type are Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever, and Chesapeake Bay Retriever. 

As in these examples, when we are referring to dog breeds within a dog type, we will often use proper (i.e., capitalized) nouns. Other examples of dog breeds we would treat as proper nouns are Great Dane, Samoyed, and Shi Tzu. Rottweiler, Pomeranian, and Scottish Terrier are a few more we would capitalize as subsets of a dog type.

Beyond dog breeds, we might capitalize dog names because they are being referred to as proper titles or categorizations. For instance, certain websites or magazines may capitalize all dog names because they want them to stand out within the text. In addition, some dog names may include a proper noun, such as the name of a country, so we could capitalize them (e.g., English Setter, French Bulldog).

Certain style guides also may direct that dog names be treated as proper nouns rather than as descriptive terms. If you think that your school, employer, or organization might have a preferred style for dog names, check their guidelines to be sure.

Deciding When to Capitalize Dog Breeds

While it might sound like there is a lot to remember, using dog names in a consistent, grammatical way is fairly simple. Just remember that:

1) In normal everyday usage, you typically wouldn’t capitalize dog types or broader dog categories.

2) When you you’re referring to a dog breed within a dog type or a dog name that includes a specific country, region, or people, you will usually capitalize it.

Keep those guidelines in mind and you’ll likely avoid many of the ruff capitalization questions and errors among the dog names that you write.

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