Profiles of individual famous, viral, and historic dogs.
In summary: Purin is a Beagle from Japan who holds multiple Guinness World Records for athletic tricks, including catching the most balls with her paws in one minute. Trained by her owner Makoto, she’s known for skateboarding, jump-rope, and soccer skills, and posts to more than 40,000 Instagram followers as @superpurine. Most famous dogs get…
In summary: Two Great Danes named Zeus have held Guinness World Records for the world’s tallest dog. The first Zeus, from Otsego, Michigan, measured 44 inches (111.8 cm) to the shoulder in 2011 and remains the tallest dog ever recorded. A second Zeus, from Bedford, Texas, was confirmed as the tallest living dog in 2022…
In summary: Smoky was a 4-pound Yorkshire Terrier found in an abandoned foxhole in the New Guinea jungle in 1944 and adopted by Corporal Bill Wynne. She served through 12 combat missions, ran communication wire through a narrow pipe that saved an estimated 250 men and 40 planes days of digging, and is widely regarded…
In summary: Popeye is a Los Angeles shelter rescue — a mix of six breeds including Shih Tzu, Poodle, Pomeranian, Maltese, Chihuahua, and Rat Terrier — whose owner, Ivy Diep, began taking him to restaurants to ease his separation anxiety. His calm table manners turned into an Instagram account, @popeyethefoodie, with several hundred thousand followers….
In summary: Gabe was a small white mixed-breed dog — related to the American Eskimo and Pomeranian — adopted from a shelter by Canadian video creator Jesse Hamel. A 2013 clip of Gabe’s distinctive bark became one of the earliest viral “remix” sounds online, used in hundreds of meme videos, before his death from heart…
In summary: Maya (@mayapolarbear) is a Samoyed whose permanently smiling face — a trait of the breed’s structure — turned her into one of Instagram’s most recognizable dogs, building an audience of roughly 2 million followers and helping popularize the Samoyed breed worldwide. Samoyeds are bred with an upturned mouth that keeps them from drooling…
In summary: Bobi was a Rafeiro do Alentejo raised by the Costa family in rural Portugal, from May 1992 until his death in October 2023 at age 31 — a lifespan that earned him a 2023 Guinness World Record as the oldest dog ever recorded. Guinness later suspended, then revoked, the title in 2024 after…
In summary: Barry der Menschenretter was a St. Bernard who lived at the Great St. Bernard Hospice in the Swiss Alps in the early 1800s, credited with saving roughly 40 travelers stranded in the snow. He is the reason the St. Bernard breed carries a rescue reputation to this day, and the hospice has kept…
In summary: Apollo was a German Shepherd with the NYPD’s K-9 unit who, with handler Officer Peter Davis, was among the first search-and-rescue teams to reach Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 — arriving roughly 15 minutes after the South Tower collapsed. In 2002 he received the Dickin Medal on behalf of all the search-and-rescue…
In summary: Chips was a German Shepherd–Collie–Husky mix donated by a New York family to the U.S. Army’s K-9 Corps in WWII. In Sicily in 1943, he broke from his handler and attacked a concealed machine-gun position, forcing its crew to surrender. He received a Silver Star and Purple Heart — later revoked because he…