Poodles just strutted back into the American Kennel Club's top five most popular dog breeds for the first time in nearly a quarter-century.
The club's annual popularity rankings came out Tuesday, drawn from more than 800,000 purebred puppies and older pooches that joined the nation's oldest canine registry last year.
With their proud stance and elaborate cut in the show ring,"they do have a reputation, in some circles, as just being froufrou," says longtime poodle owner and sometime breeder Page Hinds-Athan of Roswell, Georgia."There's definitely more to them." The imposing, mastiff-style cane corso goes back many centuries in rural Italy as a farm guardian that also pulled small carts and hunted wild boar. Its versatility endures, says Anthony Simonski, who has owned or bred corsi that compete in agility, dock diving and other sports and have appeared in TV shows and music videos.