First, an important note for everyone to remember:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize articles about various dog breed descriptions. These are things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to start out by following them—mainly, we just want you to write articles! But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. If you add or change something that's inconsistent with the rest of the dog breed articles, that's OK--someone will most likely notice it and edit it for you.

Project title

WikiProject Dog breeds

Purpose

This WikiProject aims primarily to provide a full description of the various Dog breeds. A consistent outline format is provided, including a list of various breed characteristics.

Relationship to other projects

Parentage

The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Tree of Life.

Descendant Wikiprojects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

Similar Wikiprojects

• Cat breeds
• Horse breeds

Participants

Currently active in this project

• sannse
• Elf - I've been studying dog breeds as an amateur for many years and have a collection of relevant reference books. I participate in dog agility, maintain our club's web site[1], and spent a lot of time with dogs, "dog people", and dog trainers; attend occasional workshops on training techniques. Also an amateur photographer.
• Quill - I'd like to help as well. I know a little about lots of breeds, and a lot about a few breeds! I wrote my first dog essay (if one could call it that!) when I was eight...guess you could say it's been a lifelong passion, as I am now...older than that....
• Wcrowe - AKA The Dogfather. Dogs are a favorite subject of mine. I am around hundreds of dogs on a weekly basis through obedience training and trips to the dog park. I hope to be able to contribute photographs of various breeds, photos and videos of dog-related activities, as well as articles.
• Lachatdelarue - I'd like to help this project. I have already put some stubs up for breeds that didn't have anything. Dogs are my passion, and any excuse to do more research is great :)
• Mel 'MelSkunk' Smith - My current Dog Project project is to make sure there are pages for each American Kennel Club member breed. After that, I'll move on to the Canadian Kennel Club...
• Bremen 02:10, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) I've been trying to make each breed page conform to a standard. Hope everyone is in agreement.

Interested but not particularly (or not) active in dog project at this time

• Dante Alighieri - I've decided to give it a go... if I have free time, I'll start in on this.
• matt - I've started as well, and hope to take pictures to associate with various articles, as I have for Vizsla.
• Ditkoofseppala - It's obviously a big job, so count me in. Eventually it would be nice if specialists in the various breeds could review these articles, but first there must be something to review!
• PyTigger - I am a student of Veterinary Medicine, I'll be glad to share what I learn(t).

• Andrzej - Languages: pl:+++, ru:++, en:++, fr:+, de; I'm breeder of newfoundland dogs and landseers ECT; I'm handler in dog-shows (St. Bernard, hovawart and m.m.)...

  I think Elf is taking a holiday, so I'll trot out the welcome wagon: Welcome to the Dog Project.Quill 01:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Dan Koehl - Languages sv:++ en:++ de:. I grew up as a shepheard, and has since then kept dogs close to my hart. I value especially the true knowledge how races actually were developed -trough crossings - which sometimes contrast more romantic "facts" about dogsraces, like with the collie. I started the project on the swedish wikiedia as a step to keep standards.

  Welcome to you, too, Dan! We have fun here. Quill 01:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  Welcome and thanks for coming here Dan! Gangleri 02:31, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

• Jdege - I'm a new JRT owner trying find his way around the Wikiverse.

  Good luck with that...welcome to the Dog Project! Quill 23:43, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  Ditto! Always glad to have enthused additions to the team. If you have any questions, ask on the talk page here (most of us have it on our watchlist) or on the talk page for whatever page you're working on OR on any one of our user talk pages; at the moment, I'd say that I, sannse, Wcrowe, Quill, and Lachatdelarue (in no particular order) are probably the most active & conversant in what we've been trying to accomplish. I mean, of course, besides have a good time. Gangleri has been more focused on trying to bring the various other language Wikis' dog projects up to speed. Elf | Talk 02:15, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  Thanks. I've already added a suggestion to the discussion page. --jdege 02:25, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

Working on similar dog project(s) in other languages

This group, particularly Ganglieri, is working on creating better ways of managing interlanguage links and organization, creating tools and shortcuts to help, and building the spare dog breed article sets in other languages.

• User:Gangleri (aka Reinhardt) - Languages: de:+++, ro:++, en:++, eo:+++, is:+, ru: Thanks for telling me about this project! What I can do here is looking at the links between different Wikipedias and Wiktionaries, see Wiktionary:FAQ#Referencing_Wiktionaries_from_Other_Wikipedias. I am a native German born in Romania. Beside these languages and English I fluently can read, write and talk Esperanto. Have some basic knowlege about French, Icelandic and minor of Russian. Would be happy if the other participants would mention about known languages. My main interests are Icelandic Sheepdogs and Iceland.

  Elf | Talk adds: There's an old joke: What do you call someone who speaks multiple languages? A polyglot. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? An American.  :-) I'm the latter--had several years of French in school but I'm pretty much lost when I look at the French pages. Anyway, welcome, and very glad you're here.

  Wcrowe | Talk adds: I speak some Spanish, German, French, Italian, and can order beer in Swahili.

  Quill Now that's funny. Welcome to Mel and Reindhardt. I read and write French, muddle about in a couple of others, but I can do the most important things in several languages: say "hello", "I'm hungry"--and ask where the toilet is.

Hierarchy Definition

No classification of dog breeds has been clearly defined. See this example on dividing a topic into a hierarchy.

Categories

By convention, category notation goes at the end of the article before interlanguage links:

• [[Category:Dog breeds]]: All dog breed articles about a specific breed should be labeled with this.
• [[Category:Dog types]]: All articles that could refer to a group or type of breeds should be labeled with this. Examples: terrier, scent hound, sled dog, working dog.
• On some occasions, it is appropriate for an article to be both in BREEDS and TYPES based on the way people might be searching for it among the category pages. Examples: Collie, Foxhound, Welsh Corgi. (People might not know that there is more than one type of collie, or foxhound, or corgi, so might often go to the BREEDS list first rather than the TYPES list.)

FYI, both are subcategories of Category:Dogs.

There have been occasional discussions about creating additional subcategories for each of the dog types, because there will likely be over 600 dogs in the BREEDS category when all is said and done. If this happens, breeds would be listed in BREEDS and in the subcategory. (noted Feb 20, 2005).

Project subpages and discussions

• /To do: Dog-related articles that have been started but aren't up to standards, are missing breed tables, need wikifying, etc.; photos whose origin needs to be chased down; stuff like that.
• /Breed grouping: Current breed grouping strategies (talk page discusses possibilities)
• /General
• /Strategy
• /Categories: Current dog-related category strategy, list of these categories, and organization of categories (covers all dog-related articles, not just dog breeds) (talk page covers related discussions); for an up-to-the-moment list, you really need to start at Category:Dogs and work your way down, but we'll try to keep this project subpage up-to-date also.

Tips for ambitious participants

If you want to keep tabs on what anyone is doing with any breed page--for example, newcomers creating new breed pages, you can add every breed in List of dog breeds to your watchlist, including articles that don't yet exist. (Just click on the link, which gives you an edit page, and simply turn on Watch this Page.) Yup, it takes a while to add them all... Or focus on a subset of breeds, existing and not, in which you're particularly interested. Or just browse when the mood strikes you.
Recent changes for Category:Dog_breeds will show the changes of the articles in that category.

And now there's Category:Dog stubs to browse through to find articles that are partial but not complete.

There is also a public watchlist at User:Sannse/dog watch. The related changes link will show all recent changes to articles and talk pages listed here. This is freely editable, but please take care in removing articles from this list.

Recommended article structure

There currently exists an article entitled List of dog breeds, which enumerates the various recognized breeds. Breed articles that already exist and are labeled with Category:Dog breeds appear on that category page, as well.

Title: The article for each breed shall be titled based on the apparently most-common official breed name from the major registries. These names have been placed in the List of dog breeds page. (E.g., Welsh Corgi (Pembroke).) Where the major registries are evenly split on the name, or where the breed is not recognised by the major registries, the article title shall be chosen using the most commonly used name in English language sources.

Redirects: When creating a new page, redirects (or disambiguations under other possible names should be created to point to the page (e.g., Pembroke, Pembroke Welsh Corgi).

The article on each breed shall include the following information:

The following list is only a general suggestion, and should be re-ordered as necessary.

• a table giving basic information on other names, country of origin etc. (see template below). The Hungarian Vizsla article shows this table in use.
• Introduction: general information about the breed, brief history, brief description.
• Appearance
  • Subcategories of the breed
  • Coat types and colors
  • Height and weight ranges
  • Build and proportions
  • Ears, tail, muzzle, etc.
• Temperament and/or Characteristics
• History
• Health, including possibly--
  • Known medical issues
  • Life expectancy
  • How this breed differs from others in similar categories (e.g., "Unlike other giant breeds, the xxx does not generally suffer from hip dysplasia")
• Other possible topics; keep the content specific to this breed:
  • Care
  • Training
  • Activity

Breed-table template

Pink is used as the background colour to tie in with the Animalia category in the Tree of Life WikiProject. Other colours may be introduced to separate the various groups of dogs at a later date. (Note as of March 2004: probably won't use other colors.)

Table syntax

The starting sytax for the table shown here is as follows; copy & paste the entire text here, including the starting and ending comments:

<!-- The following is markup for the breed table; scroll down to get to the main text -->
{| border=1 cellspacing=0 align=right cellpadding=2
|- align=center bgcolor=pink 
!Name of Dog
|- align=center
|[[Image:Name of image.jpg|thumb|250px|none|]]
|- align=center bgcolor=pink
!Alternative names
|-
|
{| align=center
|-
|Alternative name
|-
|Alternative name
|}
|- align=center bgcolor=pink
!Common nickname
|- align=center
|e.g., Doxie, Yorkie, Peke, GSD
|- align=center bgcolor=pink
!Country of origin
|- align=center
|[[Country]]
|- align=center bgcolor=pink
!Classification and breed standards
|-
|
{| align=center  <!-- Use the following Stds links as starting points to search 
for the specific breed page & replace these top-level links with the specific URL --> 
|[[Fédération Cynologique Internationale|FCI]]: || Group n Section n #nnn
|[http://www.dogdomain.com/fci-1.htm Stds]
|-
|[[American Kennel Club|AKC]]: ||Groupname
|[http://www.akc.org/breeds/complete_breed_list.cfm Stds]
|-
|[[Australian National Kennel Council|ANKC]]: ||Group n (Groupname)
|[http://www.ankc.aust.com/breed_list.html Stds]
|-
|[[Canadian Kennel Club|CKC]]: || Group n (Groupname)
|[http://www.canadasguidetodogs.com/breedlist.htm Stds]
|-
|[[Kennel Club (UK)|KC(UK)]]: || Groupname
|[http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/discoverdogs/groupIndex.html Stds]
|-
|[[New Zealand Kennel Club|NZKC]]: || Groupname
|[http://www.nzkc.org.nz/dogselect.html Stds]
|-
|[[United Kennel Club|UKC]]: || Groupname
|[http://www.ukcdogs.com/breeds Stds]
|-
|}
|- align=center bgcolor=pink
!Notes
|- align=center
|Note
|}<!-- end of breed table -->

Table content

• Top cell: Breed name as in article title
• Image:
  • Thumbnails of all known dog photos are listed at Album of dog photo thumbnails. Many don't have articles yet.

    If you upload a new photo, make sure that copyright is OK (e.g., GFDL) and add to the album.

  • Only one image appears in the infobox; use the best breed photo in the infobox with:

    [[Image:filename|thumb|none|250px|caption]]

  • Other images can appear in the article that show breed variations (such as coat colors), different angles (such as face shot vs. full-body shot), dog activities, and so on. Insert as thumbnails using:

    [[Image:filename|thumb|left|caption]] (change left to right if the image is below the bottom of the infobox)

  • Include a caption that mentions the coat-color, tail, ear, etc. variation and whether the dog is, for example, a puppy or nonstandard in other ways; Wikipedia standard now seems to be for full sentences, but if it's only a coat color variation I haven't been doing full sentences, just Blue merle Aussie or the like.
• Alternative names: Other names by which the breed is known by English speakers. The list of names for the breed in the FCI standards is a good starting point; also can include common breed names from other English-speaking countries and kennel clubs. User:Sannse has a spreadsheet listing these known about for new articles (can also use Google search for English web sites for the possible breed names).
• Common nicknames: Shortened names that aren't an official breed name but that are in common use by owners or breeders of these dogs (e.g., "Doxie" for Dachshund; "GSD" for German Shepherd Dog).
• Country of origin: Also available on the spreadsheet (or see breed's FCI listing - but be aware that the country listed may be the country responsible for the standard and not the true country of origin).

maybe: "Origin/patronage"??? Andrzej z Helu 08:54, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Classification: Each registry groups dogs into categories (e.g., AKC has Working, Herding, Terriers, etc.). These are the official group numbers or names, as capitalized and punctuated by the registry (so they might look inconsistent from one registry to the next). Also available on the spreadsheet or on the kennel club web sites.
• Breed standards: Turn the org. names into links to the external sites' pages for the dog breed standards.

The following generic links for the breed registries are a good starting point for finding the URLs for each breed. Note that the FCI and CKC have breed lists and standards posted in random places (main web site isn't always that helpful); given link is just one. For example, the default link for the AKC looks like this:

• [http://www.akc.org/breeds/recbreeds/group.cfm AKC]

Go to that location and find the page for the exact dog, then replace the default link with the appropriate breed page. For example, for the Alaskan Malamute, this looks like:

• [http://www.akc.org/breeds/recbreeds/alasmal.cfm AKC]

  For the FCI, a couple of different methods of finding and posting breed standards are these:

  [http://www.dogdomain.com/fcistandards/fci-243.htm FCI]

  [[http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:qg2Vj_42AdgJ:www.fci.be/uploaded_files/243gb99_en.doc+site:www.fci.be+%22243+/+09.+06.+1999%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 FCI]

• Notes: Comments such as "Breed is registered under AKC's rare breeds list"...

FCI links

• Some tables have used URLs like this one for the Alaskan Malamute, which is a google-generated HTML page from an original .DOC file [2]. These are found by doing a site specific google search for the dog name (for example, search at google for: site:www.fci.be "Alaskan Malamute"). The page generated looks rather strange because google highlights the search word each time it is mentioned. For this reason it is better to change the search word to the identifying number at the top of the page (site:www.fci.be "243 / 09. 06. 1999")
• This site has many of the breed standards in HTML but not all of them.

Which registries to include in table

The infobox should include only those registries provided here in this template. There are other English-language registries, kennel clubs, and breed clubs. These and other independent organizations with separate English-language breed standards should be in a final section of the article titled "External links".