A register, and a marketplace that isn't a racket.

Why this exists

India has at least a dozen distinct native dog breeds. Several are critically rare. Almost none of them have a maintained register, a health database, or a place where a family in Tirunelveli with a litter can reach a family in Coimbatore who wants one — without going through a classifieds site full of resellers.

Meanwhile the market for dogs in India is enormous and almost entirely pointed at imported breeds, sold at prices that have nothing to do with the animal's health and everything to do with what a foreign name signals.

We think both problems have the same shape, and that the fix is boring: write down what these breeds actually are, honestly, and remove the middlemen between keepers and homes.

How the marketplace works

• Posting is free and always will be. There is no featured tier, no boost, no promoted placement.
• We take no commission. Money never passes through us. You call the person and sort it out yourselves.
• A human reads every listing before it goes live. That is why there is a delay, and why the board is worth scrolling.
• Phone numbers sit behind a click so they don't get scraped, and we never sell them.
• Wanted ads are first-class. Posting what you're looking for works better than answering ads, because it reaches keepers who aren't advertising.

What we reject

Imported breeds, because that is not what this site is for. Ship-anywhere offers with no home visit. Puppies advertised under eight weeks. Anything that reads like a commercial breeding operation dressed up as a family with a litter.

We get this wrong sometimes in both directions. If your listing was rejected and you think it shouldn't have been, email us and a person will look again.

On the breed profiles

Each profile tries to say three things a sales page never will: what the dog was bred to do, what it is genuinely like in a house, and who should not get one. The Gaddi Kutta page tells you not to keep one in the plains. The Kanni page suggests you might want a Chippiparai instead.

Where the evidence is thin, we say so. Where the tradition is beautiful but is hurting the breed — as with the Kanni gifting custom — we say that too.

Corrections

Much of what is written about Indian native breeds online is repeated without a source. We have tried to be careful and we will still have errors. If you keep these dogs and something here is wrong, tell us. Corrections from working keepers get priority over everything else.