Millions of Irish dog licences could hold the missing clue to your heritage

With over 40 billion historical records, including 131 million from Ireland alone, MyHeritage.com gives you endless ways to explore your past. Allowing you to search through census data, birth, marriage, and death records, historical newspapers, and military documents, while discovering unexpected details like the Ireland, Dog Licence Registers (1865–1926). This is just one example of how records bring the everyday lives of your forefathers to life.

“Our cutting-edge AI models allow us to digitise and publish billions of historical records every year,” says Tomer Kachlon, VP of Product at MyHeritage. “We’re updating our record collections so frequently that every visit to MyHeritage holds the potential to uncover a new, exciting piece of your family’s story.”

For people tracing their Irish roots this time frame has long been hampered by severe record losses, specifically the destruction of the population censuses conducted through the second half of the 19th century, deliberately ordered by the government: the 1861 and 1871 census records  to protect privacy, and the 1881 and 1891 records were pulped for waste paper  due to severe paper shortages during WWI.

The “Ireland Dog Licence Registers (1865 – 1926) serve as a crucial census substitute.

Because dog ownership was nearly universal across both rural agricultural holdings and urban households, these administrative ledgers bridge the pre 1901 census gap.

The immense value of this collection extends far beyond Irish shores, resonating deeply with people from the global Irish diaspora, in the United States, Canada, Australia, England and more. For most of the 19th century, Ireland maintained Europe’s highest per-capita emigration rate—surpassing nations such as Italy, Norway, Germany, and Greece – resulting in the departure of nearly 40% of its native population in the second half of the 19th century. In addition, unlike other European migration patterns of the era, which were frequently temporary (with return rates reaching 30-50%), the emigration from Ireland was almost entirely permanent, with fewer than 10% of emigrants ever returning to their homeland. 

These administrative ledgers captured a vast spectrum of canine life, from prestigious estate hounds to the indispensable working dogs of rural farmsteads. Among these records, one can find Ireland’s 9 native dog breeds—the Irish Wolfhound, Irish Setter, Irish Red and White Setter, Irish Water Spaniel, Kerry Beagle, Irish Terrier, Kerry Blue Terrier, Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, and Glen of Imaal Terrier. Uniquely adapted to the island’s damp climate and rugged terrain, these breeds often appear under local or descriptive names like “Wicklow Terrier” or “Yellow Terrier,” offering a candid look at how they were viewed by local clerks before modern breed

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