Dog’s or Dogs’?

The term dog’s is the singular possessive form of dog. For example, “The dog’s leash was hanging by the door.” The word dogs’ is the plural possessive form of dog, used when referring to something that belongs to multiple dogs. For example, “The dogs’ owner took them for a walk every morning.”

The word dog follows the standard rule of forming plurals by adding an “s.” Therefore, when referring to multiple dogs, you use dogs. When indicating possession, you add an apostrophe after the “s” for the plural possessive form.

Singular	Dog
Plural	Dogs
Singular possessive	Dog’s
Plural possessive	Dogs’

As you can see from the table, the singular possessive is dog’s and the plural possessive is dogs’. The context of the sentence will help determine whether you are referring to one dog or multiple dogs possessing something.

• Singular: The dog barked loudly at the stranger.
• Plural: The dogs played happily in the park.
• Singular possessive: The dog’s bone was buried in the backyard.
• Plural possessive: The dogs’ kennel was cleaned every day.

Now we have covered the basics of using the plural and possessives of dog. Please keep reading to learn more about these forms and how to use them correctly in your writing.

Dog’s

The term dog’s is the singular possessive form of dog. You use it to mention something that belongs to one dog.

You will know whether a sentence refers to one dog by observing the other words in the sentence. For example, in the sentence below, we have the word collar, which is singular, combined with the singular verb was. Therefore, we know it refers to one dog.

• The dog’s collar was red with a shiny tag.

Dogs’

The term dogs’ is the plural possessive form of dog. You use it to mention something that belongs to multiple dogs.

In this example, the word owners is plural, and we have the plural verb were. Therefore, we know the sentence refers to more than one dog.

• The dogs’ owners were chatting while their pets played.

Dog

The term dog is the singular form, while dogs is the plural form. When you need to refer to more than one dog, simply add an “s.”

This follows the standard rule for making countable nouns plural in English.

• I have one dog.
• They have two dogs.

As this example shows, to refer to a plural quantity of dogs, you simply add an “s.”