There is almost universal agreement in which breed of dogs are good with small children, older children, and not recommended for children. As our goal for our family was to find the best dog for our family, and our family has small children (6 years of age and under), we used information from two sources that made recommendations on whether the particular breed of dog was good with children. These two sources obtained their information from thousands of experts, dog trainers, breeders, etc.

Because of the value in a particular breed being designated at good with children, our family gave each of the sources a 10-point scale: (Excellent: 10; Great: 8; Good: 6; Fair: 4; Terrible: 2)

We also have an adult cat named Gavin who is a part of our family. We brought Gavin into our home from the PEI Humane Society and although Gavin is wonderful, he is an adult cat who is territorial about any other species entering our home.

As a family, we read the research that dominant dogs were more aggressive toward other people and pets and that dominant breeds also require a more dominant (and, sometimes, skilled owner).

Another important area when selecting a dog for your young family is to consider how well does a dog obey her/his owner.

The Intelligence of Dogs: Canine Consciousness and Capabilities, written by Stanley Coren, is an important book that helped us understand the ability of certain breeds to obey the commands of their human "pack leader."

Coren speaks of various types of dog intelligence in his book. Coren is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and he set out to find a measure that would list the dog breeds and their ability to obey commands. No such list existed; so, he created one.

Coren sent detailed questionaires to all the dog obediance judges in North America (from the American and Canadian Kennel Clubs) and 208 expert judges returned his questionaire.

His findings were based on the results of these questionairess. His book was published in 1994. Obvioulsy, this rating scale is heavily weighted towards obedience (e.g. working or guard dogs) rather than understanding or creativity (e.g. hunting dogs), so some breeds appear lower on the list due to their stubborn or independent nature, but this nature does not make them unintelligent or impossible to train -- it makes them less willing to listen and requiring more work to get them trained.

And because dog obedience is an important factor in choosing a family dog, we will use Coren's obedience rankings of dogs as our measure on our point scale.

Dogs ranked the brightest to lowest in terms of Obedience were scored: 10 - Awesome; 8 - Great; 6 - Good; 4 - Average; 2 - Fair; 1 - Low.

For our family, it is important that our dog be friendly to people that she does not know. Being far from experts in dog training, we would not want our dog to harm another person.

Although we do not have another dog that lives with us, we do have family and friends who own dogs and consider a dog being friendly to other dogs as one of the characteristics of a good temperament.

There is little information available on dog bites by breed. There is a source of information on fatal dog bites (bites that cause death) but we wanted something more related to dog bites. We discovered that the Editor of Animal People has been recording press accounts of dog attack deaths and bites causing injury between September 1982 to November 2007. We used the following scale in our rankings: (0-3 bites: score of 10; 4-7 bites: score of 8; 8-11 bites - score of 6; 12-15 bites: score of 3; 16-19 bites: score of 2).

This is a category that we have never seen in other directories. This score represents the degree of difference between each breed's watch dog versus guard dog instinct. The rationale for our family is that we would want a dog whose bark (high watch dog ability) is worse than their bite (low guard dog ability) because a barking dog to strangers or intruders is a safety issue and the parking provides a "warning" to little kids so the children can adapt their behaviour toward the dog. In short, our family are looking for a dog that is an awesome watch dog but a terrible guard dog.

This one pretty much speaks for itself. We thought it was an important factor as children are affected by people and animals showing them attention. In other words, a lick from a dog or a tail wagging can go a long way to keeping a child interested. We ranked the scores accordingly (10 - Very High; 8 - High; 6 - Moderate; 4 - Low; 2 - Very Low).