How many dogs are there in the world?

Although it is hard to obtain reliable figures for some countries, in 2012 the total number of dogs in the world was at least 525 million. The United States alone had over 73 million.

Many countries worldwide display interesting patterns of dog ownership. Although in India the ratio of humans to dogs in 2012 was 1000 to 4, that was up 58 percent from 2007. On the other hand, Switzerland's dog population dropped 10 percent during those years. Brazil's many apartment-dwelling dog lovers makes that country home to the largest number of small dogs, at 20 million. At the other end of the scale, Saudi Arabia has one small dog per 9,400 inhabitants.