Sydney’s Most Popular Dog Breeds: The 2026 Pet Door Report

The cavoodle is the most popular dog breed in Sydney pet door enquiries, at almost 1 in 4 of the 7,696 dogs we were asked about since January 2024.

TL;DR: the report in six numbers

• 1 in 4 dogs in our enquiries is a cavoodle (23.7%), four times the next breed.
• 36% of dog enquiries are for an oodle of some kind, and the share is rising.
• 40% of American Staffy enquiries are for a screen door, against 15% for all dogs.
• 7 in 10 pet doors go into glass, and 1 in 4 owners mention a sliding door.
• 32% of dogs on the Upper North Shore and in the Hills are cavoodles, and cats
• January is the busiest month, 18% above the monthly average.

These figures come from our own enquiry form. Every time a Sydney owner asks us for a pet door quote, they tell us their pet, its breed and the door it needs to go through. We counted 8,590 of those enquiries, from January 2024 to September 2026, to see which dogs and cats are getting a door of their own, and what their owners worry about before they book.

Sydney’s 20 most popular dog breeds for a pet door

Poodles are a clear second once toy, miniature and standard sizes are counted together, and the toy poodle on its own (232 enquiries) would still rank eighth. After that the list is remarkably flat: French Bulldogs, groodles, cocker spaniels, dachshunds and staffies all sit between 3.4% and 3.7%.

These are the dogs whose owners want a pet door, which is not quite the same as the dogs Sydney owns. Breeds that live mostly outdoors, or in homes that already have a door, will be under-represented. For a pet door installer, though, this is the list that matters.

Where Sydney’s popular dogs live

We grouped the suburbs owners gave us into Sydney regions, and 84% of enquiries matched one. How many enquiries a region sends depends partly on where we work, so the fair comparison is the mix of dogs and doors within each region, not the totals.

Cavoodles are most concentrated on the Upper North Shore and in the Hills and North West, where they make up 32% of dogs with a known breed, against 26% across all our enquiries. They are least common in the Inner West (22%) and the City and Inner South (19%).

The cavoodle hotspots are Sydney’s growth estates. The suburbs that send us the most cavoodle enquiries include Box Hill, Castle Hill, Glenmore Park, Oran Park, Jordan Springs and Gledswood Hills, in the north west and south west.

Each part of the city has its own character:

• Sydney’s inner ring prefers cocker spaniels. They are the second most common breed in the Inner West, the Eastern Suburbs and the Lower North Shore, and nowhere else.
• Cats cluster in the inner city. They are 10% of all enquiries, but 21% in the City and Inner South and 15% in the Inner West, against 5% in the South West.
• Screen doors follow the bigger dogs. They are 23% of enquiries in Canterbury-Bankstown and 21% in Parramatta and Blacktown, against 8% on the Lower North Shore.
• French doors show up most on the Upper North Shore (7%) and in the Inner West (6%), against 3% overall.

Ryde, Epping and Hunters Hill is left out of the table because only two breeds there reach 10 enquiries (cavoodle, then poodle).

Oodles make up more than a third of Sydney’s pet door demand

Add every poodle cross together (cavoodles, groodles, spoodles, moodles, labradoodles, bordoodles, cobberdogs and the rest) and they account for 2,785 dog enquiries, or 36%. Their share has edged up from 34.9% in 2024 to 36.9% so far in 2026, and the cavoodle alone has gone from 23.6% to 25.0%.

That matters more than you might think, because an oodle’s name tells you very little about its size. A toy cavoodle and a standard groodle are both “oodles”, and one can be twice the height of the other. We see owners guess the flap size from the breed and get it wrong in both directions.

The fix is simple: size the door to the dog, not the breed. Measure your dog’s height at the shoulder and the width across its chest, and allow for the size it will be when fully grown. And because a puppy grows into its door, the pet door training included with every install matters as much as the size: a nervous dog learns the flap before we leave.

Big, working dogs are the ones who need a screen door

Across all dogs, 15% of enquiries are for a door in a screen or security door. For bigger, more active breeds that share climbs sharply:

40% of American Staffy enquiries are for a screen door, as are 29% of kelpies, 28% of German Shepherds and 27% of Labradors. At the other end, only 12% of cavoodles and 9% of labradoodles need one.

Our read on this is practical. Owners of big, strong dogs tend to keep the security screen shut and the main door open, so the screen is the door the dog actually has to get through. Flyscreen mesh is no match for a 30 kilo dog, which is why screen door dog door installation for larger breeds usually means a door fitted into the security screen itself.

Seven in ten pet doors go into glass

Glass is by far the biggest job in Sydney. Of 8,590 enquiries, 6,012 (70%) were for a door in glass, against 15% screen, 11% timber and 3% French doors.

The door itself is usually a sliding door. A quarter of everyone who wrote us a message (1,740 people) mentioned one, far more than any other topic. That fits how Sydney homes are built, with the living area opening onto a deck or courtyard through a glass slider.

What surprises most owners is that the existing glass can usually stay. Almost all companies will tell you to replace the pane. We cut glass on site, standing in the frame, and have cut more than 30,000 panes since 2011. The exception is toughened glass, which cannot be cut once it has been made, so the glass type is the first thing we check. If you are weighing it up, our guide to glass dog door installation in Sydney covers sliding, fixed and patio doors. Timber and French doors have their own quirks, from a timber dog door in a solid laundry door to a dog door for a French door with small glass panes.

Cats are 1 in 10 enquiries, and they want to be let in selectively

Cats made up 875 enquiries, about 10% of the total. Most owners describe their cat as a domestic short or long hair, or simply by its colour. Among pedigree cats, Ragdolls lead with 68 enquiries, followed by British Shorthairs (30) and Russian Blues (20).

Two things set cat owners apart. They are more likely to want a door in timber (17% of cat enquiries, against 11% for dogs), usually an internal or laundry door. And they care much more about who else can get in. Cats are only 1 in 10 of our enquiries, but 4 in 10 of the messages mentioning a microchip or SureFlap door came from a cat owner. The worry is the neighbour’s cat, and a microchip cat door for Sydney homes solves it by opening only for your own pet. There is more on the options in our guide to cat door installation in Sydney.

January is the busiest month for pet doors

Enquiries peak in January, at an average of 357 a month against 303 across the year, and they are quietest in March and April. The pattern held in both full years we measured.

Our best explanation is Christmas puppies. A new dog in late December, a long summer break at home, then the return to work in January is exactly the moment owners realise the dog needs its own way in and out. If you are planning a door for a new puppy, it pays to book before the January rush.

What owners tell us before they book

Most people (6,833 of 8,590) add a message to their enquiry. We counted how often each topic came up:

• A sliding door, in 1 in 4 messages.
• Price, in 1 in 8.
• Measurements, in 1 in 9. Sending a photo of the door, its size and your dog’s shoulder height with your enquiry is the quickest way to an accurate quote.
• A big dog, in 6.6%.
• An apartment, unit or strata, in 5.5%. Strata rules often decide which door you can use, so we have a separate guide to choosing a pet door for an apartment.
• Security, in 4.3%.

These counts only pick up owners who used those exact words, so the real numbers are likely higher.

How we counted

This report uses every enquiry made through the quote form on our website from 17 January 2024 to 30 September 2026.

• 8,590 people. We removed spam and counted each person once per pet type, so someone who enquired twice for the same dog is counted once.
• Enquiries, not installs. These are the pets and doors owners asked us about. Not every enquiry became a job.
• Breeds as owners wrote them. Breed is a free text field, so we grouped spellings and sizes (for example “toy cavoodle”, “cavoodel” and “cavapoo”) under one name. We could identify the breed for 90% of dogs.
• Regions. Suburb is a free text field too, so we cleaned it and grouped suburbs into Sydney regions. 7,177 of the 8,590 enquiries (84%) matched one. We compare the mix within each region rather than regional totals, and we do not publish counts for individual suburbs.
• Messages. Topic counts are the share of the 6,833 enquiries that included a message, matched on keywords.
• Privacy. Everything was counted in aggregate. No names, contact details or message text were used or published. Suburbs appear only as regional shares, or named without counts, and no figure in this report describes fewer than 10 people.

Using this data

You are welcome to use any figure or chart in this report in an article, a presentation or a post. Please credit Sydney Paws Petdoor and link to this page.

The charts are free to download and reuse as they are. If you are a journalist or a researcher and would like a breakdown we have not published, call us on 0421 575 229.

Thinking about a pet door?

Whatever your dog or cat, and whatever door they need to get through, we handle dog door installation across Sydney from the measure to the training. Call 0421 575 229 or get a quote for pet door installation online.