How we match

• Popularity is informational only. AKC rank never changes a match score or the order of results.
• Lifestyle compatibility — home, schedule, activity, noise, grooming, training patience, other pets — drives the scores.
• Not every 1–5 value is an official AKC rating. Direct, derived, and unknown traits are scored differently on purpose.
• Individual dogs vary. Health, history, learning, and the home they land in matter more than a type.
• Mixed breeds and designer mixes can vary even more. Unknown fields are not treated as easy or as a positive match.
• Dog Match cannot guarantee behavior, apartment success, or getting along with kids, cats, or other dogs.

Direct, derived, and unknown traits

A 1–5 number in Dog Match is not lab precision and is not always an AKC characteristic rating. We separate how a value was sourced so unknown guesses cannot look like evidence.

• DIRECT — a structured rating directly supported by a source, such as an AKC breed characteristic scale for energy, barking, shedding, grooming, trainability, or similar published ratings.
• DERIVED — a conservative editorial reading of reliable breed descriptions and history. Fields like prey drive, cat compatibility, small-animal caution, alone-time tolerance, apartment compatibility, shared-wall risk, novice-owner suitability, and training patience needed usually sit here. They can inform friction and caution; they are not official AKC scores.
• UNKNOWN — not strong enough to score responsibly. Mixes are unknown at the type level. Unknown values never become a positive match factor. We would rather leave a cell blank than invent a tidy number.

Lifestyle Fit (0–100) asks how naturally a type’s typical needs line up with the life you described. Friction (0–100) asks how much management, cost, training, or compromise may still be required. They are not opposites. A dog can be a strong fit and still come with meaningful friction. “You May Love Them, But…” only includes dogs that are reasonably compatible first — high friction alone does not earn a slot.

“Pit bull” is commonly used as an umbrella term for several breeds and mixes. We’ll show relevant breed profiles, but an individual dog’s temperament, history and behavior matter more than a label.