The American Kennel Club just released its annual list of the rarest dog breeds in the US, and topping the list is a dog most people have never heard of, let alone seen in person.
The Norwegian Lundehund holds the title of rarest dog breed in the United States, according to the AKC’s 2025 registration statistics. And before you ask what a Lundehund even is—it’s a small, ancient Norwegian dog with a job history stranger than most people’s. The Lundehund is the only dog breed created specifically for puffin hunting, a job that, apparently, used to be a real thing people needed a dog for.
The breed comes from Vaeroy, a remote island in Norway’s Lofoten archipelago, and it was purpose-built for the work. Six fully functional toes, a neck that bends back to touch its spine, ears that fold shut to keep water out, and ultra-flexible shoulders that allow its forelegs to extend perpendicular to the body. All of it existed for a reason. The dogs used every physical advantage to scale cliffs, squeeze through rocky crevices, and retrieve live puffins from their nests.
Then came the nets. Puffin hunting is now illegal in Norway, and the Lundehund nearly disappeared during the 1960s before concerted breeding efforts brought them back from the brink of extinction. The recovery has been modest at best. There are currently fewer than 2,000 Lundehunds worldwide and fewer than 400 in the United States. Every single one alive today traces back to an extremely small founding population, which creates its own set of ongoing health challenges for the breed.
The AKC also noted that rankings shift every year as new breeds enter the registry. “With the additions of new breeds recognized nearly every year, it’s hard to gauge whether breeds are becoming rarer or if other breeds are just becoming more popular,” the AKC said. “In some cases, there are certainly surges in popularity, but for other breeds, the registration numbers are so low that even one fewer dog registered makes a difference.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the French Bulldog retained its status as the most popular breed in the United States for the fourth year in a row. The bat-eared, wheezy little couch goblin remains America’s dog of choice, which says something about us as a people, though it’s hard to say exactly what.
For the Lundehund, obscurity has its own strange dignity. These dogs outlasted their original purpose, survived near-extinction, and still exist—small, six-toed, and completely unbothered by the fact that nobody knows what they are.
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