The Fastest Dog Breed In The World

Your dog may be the cutest dog in the world, and the smartest, and the very best boy, yes he is, yes he is. But bad news, friends. For all of the things your very best friend is the very best at, statistically, he's probably not the fastest. Generations of selective breeding have already given us that, and sadly, "the puggle you adopted in your 20s" isn't what they came up with. What was? Read on to find out!

It should surprise approximately nobody to learn that the greyhound comes in at number on on the list of the world's fastest dogs. Thousands of years of breeding with the express intention of turning wolves into living racecars has resulted in the creation of a dog so streamlined that it needs a special collar in order for its bullet-shaped head to keep from slipping free. Clocking in at speeds in excess of 40 miles per hour (according to Pet Central), the world's fastest dog somehow also wound up being the namesake of the world's slowest mode of transportation, perhaps because buses always smell like they're made out of dog.

The greyhound breed has been around for centuries, and like the noble cheetah or Ricky Bobby, has always wanted to go fast. In the 15th century Book of St. Albans, the ideal shape of these speed freaks was described: "A Greyhound should be headed like a snake and necked like a drake, backed like a beam, sided like a bream, footed like a cat and tailed like a rat," which most dog breeders today will agree with, assuming they know what a bream is. Spoiler alert: it's a kind of fish.

Currently, the future of the greyhound is the subject of some debate, as dog racing has fallen out of fashion in the recent past. Eleven of the United States' remaining 17 greyhound tracks are set to close by 2021 with Florida's recent decision to ban the sport altogether. Is there still a place in the world for dogs that move faster than bicycle messengers? Only time will tell.