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- Sporting Group
- This group was bred to be a hunting companion. Its purpose is not to catch prey, but to find it, scare it out of hiding, or retrieve it once the human hunter kills it. These dogs are the pointers, setters, and retrievers.
- Non-Sporting Group
- This group is typically the catch-all group for breeds that tend to defy categorization, or whose function is no longer useful. Many of these dogs have short breed histories because they were bred for companionship rather than to serve a specific purpose.
- Hound Group
- These dogs are raised to find and chase, then catch or kill their quarry (usually small mammals). They are typically quite fast, and can be generally categorized as sighthounds or scenthounds who obviously hunt through sight or smell respectively. Unlike the sporting group, these dogs would rather catch the animal alive rather than let the human shoot it.
- Working Group
- As the name suggests these dogs are bred to do a lot of physical jobs, and are therefore typically quite large. These breeds may be guard dogs, sled dogs, cart dogs, rescue dogs, or just used for general protection. These types of dogs are typically intelligent and hardy.
- Herding Group
- As the name suggests, these dogs are used for herding. This group has the desire and ability to control the movements of other animals – quite often sheep or cattle. Some of them work by stalking or staring, some by barking, and some by nipping. Some work by gathering or grouping the animals and others by moving and driving them. Most of the dogs in this group are easy to train; do their work both on their own, and through verbal commands; and are intelligent and devoted.
- Terrier Group
- Terriers were bred to find and kill rodents and other vermin. Usually small, these dogs are great diggers (terra means earth you know), and may even pursue their prey underground. These dogs can be grouped into long-legged and short-legged breeds.
- Toy Group
- It is hard to provide any general qualities to these dogs (other than that they are small) because many of them are simply dogs from other groups that were bred simply to produce a smaller size over the generations.