Best Family Dog Breeds

A family dog has to cope with more than children. It usually shares the house with a cat, meets a stream of visitors, and gets handled by people of every age and confidence level. The breeds here score well on both counts we track — patience with children and tolerance of other animals — which is a harder combination to find than either on its own.

23 breeds in our library match

How we picked these: breeds we rate a full 5 out of 5 for family-friendliness and 4 out of 5 or higher for getting on with other pets. The list is generated from our own breed ratings rather than hand-picked, and refreshes whenever we update a breed profile — so any breed we have not rated yet simply is not shown.