Dog breeding and cat breeding are two very different things. Sure, you'll find cat breed loyalists, but nowhere near the numbers you'll find with dog breed enth

Dog breeding and cat breeding are two very different things. Sure, you'll find cat breed loyalists, but nowhere near the numbers you'll find with dog breed enthusiasts. Most people are fine locating a cute domestic long/short hair cat and adopting it. People are much pickier with dogs. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for superficial and arbitrary reasons. People tend to have stronger bonds with dogs and different dog breeds behave much differently. If you want a smart, energetic dog, and enjoy doing things like agility, you're probably going to go after a herding group dog rather than a bulldog. But that herding dog probably isn't going to make a great pet around children, so if you want a family dog, maybe you're going to go after a calmer breed like a Golden. And for people who use dogs for jobs (which is a big reason breeding came to be and still exist), the breeds excel at whatever they're meant to do. Sport dogs for hunting, herding dogs for working livestock, terriers for chasing out vermin, etc. While I largely agree with you that commercial breeding is far too rampant, there is some value in maintaining breeds. One positive side effect is that you can still get rescue mutts that exhibit positive qualities of breeds while also being much healthier than if it were a purebred. For example, I used to have a mixed breed dog that had clear herding blood and she did great in agility, learning tricks, etc. but didn't have the genetic issues that many Border Collies, Australian shepherds, etc. have. Unfortunately, you're right in that people choose breeds for illogical reasons. For any dog breed, it's very easy to find their strengths and weaknesses online and find a breed that's actually a good fit. Instead, people pick a breed because they like the way they look or because they had good memories of a dog in that breed. Breed-based rescues always have dogs that are dropped off because the family didn't properly research the dog and when the dog exhibited traits that could be fully predicted by doing research (e.g. their Aussie herded and knocked over their toddlers or nipped their ankles).