National Dog Survey: Describing UK Dog and Ownership Demographics

Abstract

With dogs being the most commonly owned companion animal in the United Kingdom, knowledge about dog demographics is important in understanding the impact of dogs on society. Furthermore, understanding the demography of dog owners is also important to better target support to dogs and their owners to achieve optimal welfare in the canine population. Combining natural fluctuations in the population and unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for an up-to-date large-scale dataset is even more paramount. In order to address this, Dogs Trust launched the ‘National Dog Survey’ to provide a large population-level dataset that will help identify key areas of concern and needs of owners and their dogs. The online survey was completed by a total of 354,046 respondents owning dogs in the UK, providing data for 440,423 dogs. The results of this study highlight dog demographics, including acquisition and veterinary factors, as well as owner demographic and household information. Finally, general trends in ownership, and more specifically those following the COVID-19 pandemic, are described. This paper’s findings provide valuable insight into the current population of dogs and their owners in the UK, allowing for the most appropriate products, services, interventions and regulations to be developed, reducing the likelihood of negative welfare outcomes such as health and behaviour issues, relinquishment or euthanasia. Furthermore, with significant changes to the dog population following the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, this dataset serves as an up-to-date baseline for future study comparisons to continue to monitor trends and patterns of the dog population and dog owners going forwards.

Owner expectations and surprises of dog ownership experiences in the United Kingdom

“…Respondents were asked to complete one survey per household and for their most recently acquired dog. Full demographic summaries of respondents are available in a previous publication ( 19 ).…”

“…The “National Dog Survey 2021”, developed by Dogs Trust, collected responses from dog owners in the UK between 10th September to 25th October 2021. Full survey methodology including tool development, study participants and data collection has been previously described ( 19 ).…”

“…Following the data cleaning methodology as described in Anderson et al ( 19 ), data were imported into R (version 4.1.3) ( 21 ) and the distribution of the data checked. Descriptive statistics were then collated based on responses to the question “After owning a dog, please tell us which of the following are less, more or as you expected?”, and variables of interest were compared using the mean number of surprises (combining both more than and less than expected responses) cross tabulated to identify differences between groups.…”

Companion animal adoption and relinquishment during the COVID-19 pandemic: Households with children at greatest risk of relinquishing a cat or dog

“…However, this difference could be due to the greater number of dogs kept as pets compared to cats. For example, UK- and USA-based surveys have consistently found that more households contain dogs than cats (Hawes et al 2022 ; PFMA Pet Population 2022 ; Anderson et al 2023 ). More research is needed to compare relinquishment rates between these species to identify reasons for variation in the number of animals being relinquished, while taking account of the popularity of each species as a companion animal.…”

“…Packer et al ( 2021 ) found that 40.3% owners that acquired a puppy during the COVID-19 period had no prior experience of dog ownership, an increase from 33.3% of dog owners that acquired a puppy in 2019. Similarly, in their national survey of dog ownership in the UK, Anderson et al ( 2023 ) found an increase in younger individuals acquiring a puppy and highlighted the need to assess the effect of age and ownership experience on risk of relinquishment. The high prevalence of first-time pet owners in the current study suggests that support is particularly important for new owners in acquiring a suitable pet, retaining that pet, or relinquishing the animal safely when required.…”