Indian dog breeds on the register: six recognised by ICAR-NBAGR between 2020 and 2026, twenty named in the lists, one state policy, four forces that trained them, and what each number rests on

Indian dog breeds on the register: six names, three gazettes, one ladder of accession numbers

A breed is on the register when the Breed Registration Committee says so and the Bureau at Karnal gives it a number. Six dogs have one.

The National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources registered its first three dog breeds in 2020, the Rajapalayam and Chippiparai of Tamil Nadu and the Mudhol Hound of Karnataka, bringing the register to 200 breeds, after dogs, which 'were earlier not included in the livestock category', were taken in as 'companion animal'. On 6 January 2025 the Breed Registration Committee added the Gaddi of Himachal Pradesh and the Changkhi of Ladakh among ten new breeds, which the Department of Agricultural Research and Education gazetted on 15 April 2025 as S.O. 1720(E) with the accession numbers INDIA_DOG_0600_GADDI_19004 and INDIA_DOG_3800_CHANGKHI_19005 Gazette of India, Extraordinary. On 7 August 2026 the committee's 14th meeting in New Delhi, chaired by ICAR's Deputy Director General (Animal Science), registered sixteen breeds including the Kombai of Tamil Nadu, INDIA_DOG_1800_KOMBAI_19006, taking the register to 262, of which 258 are indigenous and four synthetic.

The accession number is the register. Its parts are the species, a state code, the breed name and a serial that runs across all dog breeds, so the Gaddi being 19004 and 'the fourth indigenous dog breed to be registered' fixes the three 2020 breeds at 19001 to 19003 Gazette of India, Extraordinary; the 2020 gazette that assigns them sits on nbagr.icar.gov.in, which did not resolve on 2 November 2026, so the dataset shows those three by sequence and not from the document. Bonbeno's Indian dog breeds hub carries each breed's page.

What registration is and is not: a genetic resource, not a breed standard, and five dogs among 229 breeds

The register exists to document animal genetic resources. It is not the kennel club, it sets no show standard, and it counts no dogs.

After the January 2025 meeting the register held 229 indigenous breeds, '53 breeds of cattle, 21 of buffalo, 41 of goat, 46 of sheep, 8 of horse, 9 of camel, 15 of pig, 4 of donkey, 5 of dog, 2 of yak, 20 of chicken, 4 of duck, and 1 of geese'. The Bureau's own 2016 method paper, built on a pilot survey of the Rajapalayam and Chippiparai, said there were 'about eight indigenous dog populations' in the country and that characterisation of most was incomplete; it also recorded that the Kennel Club of India 'has registered few of the Indian dog breeds including Rajapalayam and Mudhol Hound'. The network project that feeds the register reviewed 33 centres and the documentation of 53 potential populations across all species in January 2025.

Registration documents a population; it does not count it, license its breeders or write a show standard. The Bureau's genomic work is where the dogs are now being counted in a different sense: its Axiom_Shwaan array, designed from whole-genome resequencing of 48 dogs from four populations and carrying 629,597 markers, was validated by genotyping 186 dogs of 11 breeds or populations at a 99 percent call rate, and separated the native breeds into distinct clusters. That is eleven populations under genomic study against six on the register, which is the honest size of the gap. What a breed page needs, the standard, the temperament, the nutrition, the health history, is not in any of these documents, and this report does not pretend it is.

The six, breed by breed: what the register, the universities and the forces say about each

Each breed below has a home tract, a characterising institution and, for four of them, a uniformed buyer.

Rajapalayam: the white hound of Virudhunagar, and the breeders who left

The Rajapalayam is registered to Tamil Nadu and described at registration as a medium-sized dog with a compact body, white coat, semi-drooping ears and a semi-curved tail, 'alert and good for guarding', found in Rajapalayam town and also called 'Vellai Moonji Naai', the white-faced dog. The Bureau's descriptor method was piloted on this breed. In 2016 a Kennel Club member-breeder in the town told The News Minute he had kept 19 Rajapalayams five years earlier and had four or five, and a Tirunelveli doctor said 'Rajapalayam and Chippiparai breeders have reduced. Only the breed called Kanni is faring okay', with a pup selling at Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 and sometimes Rs 5,000. In 2026 the Tamil Nadu Animal Welfare Board lists the Rajapalayam Co-operative Kennel at Puzhendi Road, Rajapalayam as a registered breeder permitted 'Rajapalayam Only'. An Army official told The Week in September 2024 that the Remount and Veterinary Corps 'has inducted local breeds like Mudhol hound, Chippiparai, Rajapalayam'. Bonbeno's Rajapalayam page covers the dog.

Chippiparai, and the Kanni question the documents answer three ways

The Chippiparai is registered to southern Tamil Nadu, found in Madurai, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Virudhunagar, 'also called Kanni (virgin) or Vettai Naai (hunting dog)', medium-sized, fast and mostly fed non-vegetarian food. So the register treats Kanni as a name for the Chippiparai; the Kennel Club of India, as ThePrint reported in 2020, 'registers it under two names: Kanni and Chippiparai'; Tamil Nadu's 2024 policy lists Rajapalayam, Kombai, Chippiparai and Kanni as four recognised breeds; and the state's new Tenkasi centre keeps the four as four, with a breeding unit for each, the Kanni being bred in Thoothukudi, Virudhunagar and Tirunelveli by the 2016 account DT Next (IANS), 'TN govt to promote… Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences… The News Minute, Geetika Mantri. This report does not resolve it; it records that the national register has one breed where the state has two, and that the Bureau's own survey of the breed has not been published in a form that settles it. Bonbeno keeps a Chippiparai page and a Kanni page, each saying so.

Mudhol Hound: the one breed with a university centre and four uniforms

The Mudhol Hound is registered to Karnataka with 'good guarding ability' and speed, and it is the only Indian breed with a dedicated state conservation centre: the Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University's Canine Research and Information Centre at Timmapur, Mudhol taluk, Bagalkot, inaugurated on 24 September 2009 by the Chief Minister on 40 acres the state granted free of cost Karnataka Veterinary. The centre supplied the six hounds the Army's Remount and Veterinary Corps trained at Meerut for about a year from 2016, 'the first Indian breed to serve the nation' in its director's words, after which the Corps asked for eight more The News Minute, 'Mudhol Hounds…; four of seven pups ordered by the Indian Air Force reached Agra in February 2021 for runway bird control; two pups went to the Special Protection Group in April 2022; and by October 2025 the BSF Academy at Tekanpur was breeding and training the breed, with a Mudhol Hound named Riya the first Indian breed to win Best in Tracker Trade and Best Dog of the Meet at the All India Police Duty Meet 2024. A Times of India figure the 2017 reports carried put the breeding families in Mudhol at nearly 700. Bonbeno's Mudhol Hound page has the breed.

Gaddi: the Himalayan guardian, fewer than a thousand

The Gaddi, registered on 6 January 2025 as the fourth Indian dog breed and the first from the Himalaya, is distributed in the Chamba, Kangra, Kullu, Mandi, Lahaul Spiti and Kinnaur districts of Himachal Pradesh, named after the Gaddi shepherd tribe, 'mainly reared as guarding dog', with a litter of four to eight The Tribune, 'Gaddi dog recognised…. The university that characterised it, CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya at Palampur, described the dog in 2022 as medium in stature, robust and muscular, 'predominately black with occasional white marking', reaching first oestrus at 12 to 18 months and whelping eight to twelve times in a lifetime, and runs an outdoor conservation unit at its veterinary college that supplies pups to shepherds. The population reported at registration was 'fewer than 1,000', with adult males at 38.7 kg and females at 32.5 kg. The Home Ministry ordered trials of the 'Himalayan Mountain Dog', naming the Himachali Shepherd, Gaddi, Bakharwal and Tibetan Mastiff, with the BSF, ITBP and SSB in 2022. Bonbeno's Himalayan Sheepdog page covers the Gaddi.

Changkhi: Ladakh's watch dog, registered and otherwise unreported

The Changkhi, registered the same day as the Gaddi, is 'native of Ladakh' and a livestock guardian, 'used as watch dog to guard their livestock including sheep and goat from snow leopard, wild animals and other predators'; the trade press described it in April 2025 as a large, powerfully built dog with a dense double coat, mostly black or dark brown, and a mane-like ruff. No population estimate, no force and no conservation unit for it appears in any document read for this report, which makes it the registered breed about which the least is published. Bonbeno's Changkhi page says what is known.

Kombai: registered in August 2026, in the CRPF since 2020

The Kombai was registered at the Breed Registration Committee's 14th meeting on 7 August 2026 as INDIA_DOG_1800_KOMBAI_19006, the only dog among sixteen new breeds. ThePrint's 2020 profile described it as tan with a black snout, shorter and stouter than the Rajapalayam, historically a boar-hunting and guarding dog, 'rare', and recorded that the CRPF had recently recruited Combai dogs into its Dog Breeding and Training School; the Home Ministry listed a CRPF trial of the breed in 2022, and in October 2025 the Prime Minister named the CRPF's Bengaluru school as training 'Mongrels, Mudhol Hounds, Kombai, and Pandikona'. Tamil Nadu's Tenkasi centre and its Saidapet breeding unit both hold it. Bonbeno's Kombai page has the breed.

Which forces use them: nine years of inductions and trials, with the numbers each report gives

The collation the plan asked for. Every row is a named report, and a trial is not an induction.

The Army went first and the BSF went furthest. Six Mudhol Hounds reached the Remount and Veterinary Corps, which trains the Army's dog squad, at Meerut in 2016 and trained for about a year, with Jammu and Kashmir the intended test and a further batch of eight requested The News Minute, 'Mudhol Hounds…; by September 2024 the Corps had inducted three Indian breeds and was trialling a fourth, among 'several hundreds of dogs' that remain mainly German Shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Labradors. The paramilitary route ran through trials, and one trial ended without a published result: the Home Ministry said in November 2022 that the SSB and ITBP had concluded their Mudhol Hound trial, listed the Rampur Hound with the BSF, the Combai with the CRPF and the Himalayan mountain dogs with three forces, and put the scale at about 300 pups a year for about 4,000 dogs; in October 2023 the CRPF had around 1,500, the CISF 700 and the NSG 100, and the Mudhol outcome was still unreported. By October 2025 the BSF Academy at Tekanpur had made the Rampur Hound and the Mudhol Hound its focus breeds, rewritten its training manuals for them, and reported 150 Indian-breed dogs deployed on the borders, and the Prime Minister recalled that 'about five years ago, I discussed Indian breeds of dogs in this program' and that 'BSF and CRPF have increased the number of Indian breed dogs in their contingents'.

Twenty names and six registrations: where the lists disagree with the register and with each other

Every page that ranks for the query gives a different count. The register gives one, and it is the smallest.

The standard list of dog breeds from India names twenty, from the Bakharwal to the Vikhan, and marks six of them as recognised by the Kennel Club of India; it says nothing about ICAR-NBAGR, so fourteen of its twenty are unregistered names on every register, and the Changkhi, a registered breed, is not on it at all. The KCI's own site carries no list of recognised Indian breeds, only a tariff sheet on which 'Indian breeds' pay half the standard litter fee, Rs 375 a puppy against Rs 750, and the club publishes no breed-level registration counts, so no one can say how many Indian-breed puppies it registers. The Prime Minister's six names of 2020 include the Himachali Hound, which ThePrint identified as the Gaddi, and the Kanni, which the register folds into the Chippiparai. The page ranking first for 'indian dog breeds' on 2 November 2026 lists fourteen, among them a Caravan Hound (the Kennel Club's name for the Mudhol Hound, per ThePrint) counted separately from the Mudhol Hound, and a Haofa whose population it puts at about 1,000 as of 2022 ThePrint, 'Rajapalayam, Kanni.

The honest reading is that 'Indian dog breeds' is three different questions: six breeds have a genetic-resource registration, between six and twenty have a name a club or a list will accept, and about a dozen have a population somebody has measured. A buyer asking which is 'recognised' should ask by whom, and a breeder quoting a number should be asked which register it came from.

Tamil Nadu: the one state with a dog breeding policy, a conservation centre and a breeders' register

Four of the six registered breeds are from Tamil Nadu, and it is the only state that has built the machinery around them.

The Tamil Nadu State Dog Breeding Policy, 2024, gazetted in September 2024, recognises the Rajapalayam, Kombai, Chippiparai and Kanni as native breeds, orders the Kattai, Ramanathapuram Mandai, Malaipatti and Sengottai standardised, recognised and registered 'so they do not become extinct', lets community dogs with desirable traits be standardised as a breed, requires karyotyping before a dog is used for breeding, caps a female at five litters, and bans the breeding of the Pug, Chow Chow and nine cold-climate foreign breeds. On 1 September 2025 the state's veterinary university opened the Regional Centre for the Conservation of Native Dog Breeds of Tamil Nadu at Pavoorchatram, Tenkasi, funded by a state scheme, with 28 breeding dogs at inception, five females and two males of each of the four breeds, to supply 'high-quality puppies' and train breeders. The Animal Welfare Board's 2026 list of registered breeders has six entries: the Tenkasi centre (Chippiparai, Kombai), the Rajapalayam Co-operative Kennel (Rajapalayam only), the university's Dog Breeding Unit at the Veterinary Integrated Complex, Saidapet, Chennai (all four native breeds), and three private kennels permitted Labradors, Dobermans, Pomeranians and the like.

That is the whole of India's native-breed infrastructure outside Karnataka's Mudhol centre and Himachal's Gaddi unit: one policy, one centre with 28 dogs, one co-operative, one university unit. A decade earlier the state's breeders were telling reporters that Rajapalayam and Chippiparai numbers had fallen and that the government had not helped; the policy, the centre and the breeders' register are the answer that took eight years to arrive, and whether they move the count is the thing to measure next.

What each count rests on: no census, one population estimate, and breeder numbers from a decade ago

The register says which breeds exist. Nothing official says how many dogs of each there are.

• No registered breed has an official population count. The one estimate at registration is the Gaddi's 'fewer than 1,000', reported by the trade press, not the Bureau. The Mudhol's 'nearly 700' breeding families is a 2017 newspaper figure. The Rajapalayam's decline is one breeder's 19 to 4.
• The Kennel Club publishes no breed-level counts, so the 32,219 puppies it registered in 2025 cannot be split into Indian and foreign breeds, and the half-price tariff's use is unmeasurable. Bonbeno's KCI registrations report has the totals.
• The forces publish inductions, not strengths. Six, four, two and 150 are the only Indian-breed dog numbers any force has given, and the trial that could have given a verdict on the Mudhol Hound as a police dog concluded without one being published ThePrint (PTI), 'Indian dog breeds to be….
• The Bureau's genomic count is the most recent measure of diversity: 186 dogs of 11 breeds or populations genotyped, which is five more populations than the register names.
• Tamil Nadu's centre is the first place a registered breed is counted by sex: 28 dogs, five females and two males per breed, at inception.

What a reader can do with the register

Five uses, from checking a claim to choosing a dog.

1. Check a breeder's 'recognised breed' claim against the six. If the breed is not Rajapalayam, Chippiparai, Mudhol Hound, Gaddi, Changkhi or Kombai, it is not on the ICAR-NBAGR register, whatever the kennel says.
2. Ask which register. The Kennel Club recognises six by the standard list's count, the state of Tamil Nadu four, and the national register six; only two names, Rajapalayam and Mudhol Hound, are on all three.
3. In Tamil Nadu, buy from the board's list. Six registered breeders, three of them for native breeds, with registration numbers you can quote back.
4. Use the half tariff. An Indian-breed litter registers at Rs 375 a puppy within 60 days, not Rs 750.
5. Read the breed page before the register. The register gives a home tract and a use; it says nothing about temperament, exercise, health or nutrition, which live on Bonbeno's Indian dog breeds hub and each breed's page, including how a southern sighthound and a Himalayan guardian each cope with the humid monsoon months of the plains.

What this report does not establish

It reads the documents that exist, and the documents are thin.

• The 2020 gazette was not read. nbagr.icar.gov.in, which hosts it, did not resolve on 2 November 2026 from two independent fetchers; the three 2020 accession numbers are stated by sequence, not from the document.
• The Kanni question is recorded, not resolved. The register's own descriptor, which would settle whether Kanni and Chippiparai are one breed, has not been published in a form this report could read.
• No force's trial report is public. The SSB and ITBP Mudhol trial's result, and every CAPF trial since, is known only as 'concluded' or 'under way'.
• The Prime Minister's 2020 words are as the press reported them. The official transcript host returned 403 on this attempt; the 2025 words are from the government's own e-book of the broadcast.
• The standard list is a Wikipedia list. It is the only document that names all twenty with their recognition marked, and it is cited as that, not as an authority on any single breed.
• Population figures are the press's, not the Bureau's, and the Bureau's survey instrument asks for them, so the gap is in publication rather than in method.

How this report was built

The register from its own documents, the forces from the reports that announced each step, the lists from the pages that rank.

1. The registered breeds come from ICAR's note of 7 August 2026, the Gazette of India notification S.O. 1720(E) of 15 April 2025 read from egazette.gov.in, the Bureau's January to June 2025 newsletter read from nbagr.res.in, and The Tribune's Karnal report of 23 December 2020 for the first three Gazette of India, Extraordinary ICAR-National Bureau of Animal Genetic… The Tribune, Parveen Arora.
2. The breed descriptions come from the Bureau's newsletter, the Palampur university's 2022 paper in the Indian Journal of Animal Sciences, the Bureau's 2016 methodology paper in the Journal of Livestock Biodiversity, and the trade-press reports of the Gaddi and Changkhi registrations Journal of Livestock Biodiversity 6(2) Krishi Jagran, 'Gaddi Dog from Himalayas… Krishi Jagran, 'Changkhi Dog Registered….
3. The forces table is built from Scroll and The News Minute (November 2017), ThePrint (30 August 2020), The Tribune (16 February 2021), ETV Bharat (18 August and 10 November 2022), PTI via ThePrint (23 October 2023), The Week (2 September 2024), All India Radio and the government's Mann Ki Baat e-book (October 2025) and Telangana Today (26 October 2025) The News Minute, 'Mudhol Hounds… ThePrint, 'Rajapalayam, Kanni The Tribune, 'IAF gets desi dogs to scare… ETV Bharat, 'Indian breed Mudhol dogs now… ETV Bharat, Gautam Debroy ThePrint (PTI), 'Indian dog breeds to be… The Week, 'Indian Army looking at local… All India Radio, News On AIR Central Bureau of Communication Telangana Today (IANS).
4. Tamil Nadu comes from the state veterinary university's page for the Tenkasi centre, the Animal Welfare Board's registered-breeders PDF, the IANS report of the 2024 policy and The News Minute's 2016 report Tamil Nadu Animal Welfare Board DT Next (IANS), 'TN govt to promote… The News Minute, Geetika Mantri; Karnataka from the university's Mudhol centre page.
5. The lists come from the standard list of dog breeds from India, the Kennel Club's tariff sheet and the page ranking first for the query on Google India on 2 November 2026, whose People Also Ask questions were captured the same day Venttura, 'Best Indian Dog Breeds. The dataset is one row per breed name across the list, the register and the policy, with the forces column read from the reports above.