Data sources and update schedule
Every figure on this site traces back to a named public source. This page lists them, shows when each was last refreshed, and explains what each source can and cannot tell you.
Refresh status
- Last data refresh
- 2026-10-28
- Breed records
- 50
- Wikipedia summaries
- 50 breeds
- Licensed photographs
- 38 breeds
- FDA adverse-event counts
- 31 breeds
Sources
Wikipedia REST API
Breed descriptions and background. Free, no key required, CC BY-SA licensed. We take the plain-text summary and link to the full article from every breed page.
Wikimedia Commons
Breed photographs. Free, no key required. Every image page states its licence; we record the licence and the photographer and display both beneath the image. Attribution is never stripped.
commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php
openFDA animal and veterinary adverse events
Counts of adverse-event reports filed with the FDA, queried by breed name. No key required for low-volume use. The FDA republishes this dataset monthly, which makes it the most frequently refreshed source on the site.
What it does not tell you: a report is not proof that a breed is predisposed to a condition. Reporting rates depend on owner and veterinarian behaviour, and counts are not normalised by how many animals of each breed exist. Read it as a record of what owners reported, not as a risk score.
open.fda.gov/apis/animalandveterinary/event
Dog CEO
Additional dog photographs. Free, no key required, no attribution requirement.
Maintained breed reference data
Weight, height, lifespan and the 1–5 lifestyle scores are maintained internally and reviewed by hand against published breed standards.
How we estimate the cost of keeping a breed
No clinic publishes a cost figure for every breed, so we do not quote one. Instead every breed total is summed from measured US line items, then adjusted only where body size or coat genuinely changes the bill. Each line below names its source, so you can re-add the numbers yourself and check the result.
Layer 1 — measured line items
The starting point is the American Pet Products Association's National Pet Owners Survey (2024-2025), which asks owners about each expense category separately:
| Basic annual expense | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Total veterinary | $331 | $179 |
| Food | $293 | $194 |
| Medications | $97 | $47 |
| Treats | $60 | $42 |
| Toys | $37 | $25 |
| Subtotal | $818 | $487 |
Source: APPA National Pet Owners Survey 2024-2025, as transcribed by the Insurance Information Institute. Note the APPA caveat we rely on: the survey does not ask participants for a total annual spend, and these categories are not all-inclusive. That is why grooming, litter and insurance are added as separate layers below rather than assumed to sit inside the subtotal.
Layer 2 — costs APPA excludes
- Grooming — $75 per professional visit, 4 visits a year at our 3/5 coat score. This reproduces the ASPCA figure of $300 a year for dog grooming. Visit frequency scales with coat: none at 1/5, two at 2/5, and so on up to eight at 5/5. Most cats are not professionally groomed; only heavy coats (4/5 and above) carry the full rate, others get a $28 annual allowance for brushes and shampoo.
- Litter — $150 a year for cats, from ASPCA's annual cost table.
- Licence — $15 a year, from the same ASPCA table.
Grooming rate: MarketWatch pet-cost data, updated October 2026. ASPCA figures: ASPCA "Cutting Pet Care Costs" annual cost table.
Layer 3 — reported but never added
Pet insurance averages $676 a year for a dog and $383 for a cat (NAPHIA 2024, via the Insurance Information Institute). It is deliberately kept out of the headline figure: only a minority of US pets are insured, so folding a premium into every breed would overstate what a typical owner actually pays. It appears as a separate line on each breed page for readers who carry a policy.
Layer 4 — the fully-loaded view
Each breed page also shows a second total for owners who insure, board their pet while travelling and set money aside for emergencies. This one is a modelled budget, not a survey result, and the page says so:
| Item | Basis | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Routine care | layers 1 and 2 above | breed-specific |
| Insurance | NAPHIA 2024 average premium | $676 dog / $383 cat |
| Boarding | 10 days a year at $25/day | $250 |
| Emergency fund | one ~$900 event every three years | $300 |
Boarding rate: MarketWatch, $25/day. Emergency cost: Rover reports a typical emergency visit starts around $300 and reaches $4,000 once diagnostics and an overnight stay are added, so $900 is a mid-range event. The ten boarded days and the once-in-three-years frequency are our own planning assumptions — they are stated openly on every breed page precisely so you can substitute your own. If you never board your pet and keep a separate savings buffer, the routine total is the number for you.
How body size and health move the number
- Food scales with body weight to the power of 0.75, measured from a 22 kg reference dog and a 4.5 kg reference cat. A 40 kg dog does not eat twice as much as a 20 kg one — metabolic rate rises more slowly than mass. This is the standard allometric relationship used in animal nutrition.
- Veterinary care and medication shift with the number of conditions listed in the breed's health section, from 0.85× for a breed with no listed issues to a cap of 1.20× for one with six or more. The base rate is the survey average, so a healthier-than-average breed lands below it.
- Treats, toys, litter and licence stay at the national average, because they track household habit rather than breed.
Sanity check
Our reference dog — average build, average coat, no listed health issues — comes to about $1,133 a year from these layers, excluding insurance. That sits between APPA's own $818 subtotal (which omits grooming and boarding) and MarketWatch's $2,489 (which includes insurance and boarding). A typical breed therefore lands in the $700–$1,700 range on this site, with giant breeds and heavy coats at the top. If a total here looks far outside that band, the method is wrong and we want to hear about it.
What these figures exclude
Emergencies, non-routine surgery, training classes, boarding and pet-sitting, and the purchase price. A single emergency visit can exceed a year of routine costs — the ten-year totals on this site are the floor, not the ceiling.
Purchase price
Shown as a breeder range, not a single figure. Adoption from a shelter typically costs $50–$600 including spay/neuter in most US states, which is far below the breeder range. We show the breeder range because that is the number buyers search for, and state the adoption figure here so the comparison is not misleading.
How often this updates
- FDA counts — monthly, following the FDA's release cycle.
- Wikipedia and Commons — quarterly, and whenever a page is corrected.
- Cost and trait scores — reviewed twice a year against published reference ranges.
Corrections
If a number here disagrees with a source you trust, tell us with the page URL and the source you believe is correct. Corrections are applied and dated.