Not much at all. Our record scores the Borzoi at 2 out of 5 for barking, and owners consistently describe the same dog: quiet in the house, quiet on the walk, saving its voice for the moments that matter. That quiet is a real trait, not an absence of personality: this is a large dog of 60 to 105 lb that communicates in posture, presence and the occasional single bark that owners learn to take seriously precisely because it is so rare.
Calm, sensitive, dignified and catlike indoors is the record's Borzoi, the Russian wolfhound: an aristocrat among sighthounds, bred for the grand coursing hunts of the tsarist era. Puppies are leggy, charming and surprisingly mischievous; adults are serene, graceful companions with a philosopher's detachment and sudden, joyful bursts of clowning reserved for their chosen people. Few breeds reward a peaceful house this beautifully. From Russia, the Borzoi is a large sighthound whose traditional work was to course game by sight at full speed, with wolves and hares as the quarry of the Russian wolf hunts. Borzoi (Russia) is a large sighthound whose work was to course game by sight at full speed, with wolves and hares as the quarry of the Russian wolf hunts.
It helps to see the rating in its cluster. The Borzoi's record reads Good with children for children, Usually good with dogs for other dogs and Reserved with strangers for strangers, and a dog's barking is mostly aimed at exactly those three audiences: the family it lives with, the dogs it meets and the strangers it announces. It is a large dog of 60 to 105 lb from the Hound group, developed in Russia, with a Calm, sensitive, dignified and catlike indoors temperament. Read together, those lines describe how much dog is making the noise, how often it is likely to feel like making it, and how much of the household's week the dog occupies, which is the real context any barking verdict needs.
Finding what makes a Borzoi bark takes some listing, because the list is short. A stranger at the door who does not behave like a visitor. A noise in the night that is genuinely out of pattern. Another animal where it should not be. Because the Borzoi barks so rarely, at 2 out of 5, its barks carry information other households have to guess at: when this dog speaks, something has actually happened. Owners learn to go and look rather than call for quiet, and the breed's reputation for steadiness, strangers rated Reserved with strangers, dogs rated Usually good with dogs, is built on exactly that economy of voice.
The Borzoi suits calm, aesthetically minded households with secure running space and a fondness for quiet, elegant company. Owners describe living with living sculpture that occasionally explodes into motion and then returns to the sofa like a cat. Never chase a sighthound to catch it; teach it coming to you pays better than the horizon.
The rest of the record rounds the picture out. The record's color line for the Borzoi reads: Any color. The coat is described as Medium length, silky and wavy, short length, with grooming effort rated 4 of 5 and shedding at 3 of 5. Food for a typical 82 lb adult runs about $48 a month on this site's cost record, and insurance is recorded at $40 to $73 a month, a reminder that the voice comes attached to a whole dog with a decade of budget in it. None of that alters the headline rating, 2 out of 5; it simply keeps the decision about this breed's noise in proportion with the decision about the breed.
Start with the first name on that shortlist, the Greyhound, and the difference is already instructive: two breeds can share a build, a coat and a working past and still sit a full point apart on barking, because the score follows the breed's recorded temperament and heritage, not its silhouette. The Borzoi's 2 out of 5 should therefore be read as a measurement of this breed alone. Each score on the record was assigned breed by breed, and the shortlist exists for comparison, not for averaging.
Puppies get a specific paragraph because the adult's quiet is partly built, not only born. A young Borzoi that discovers barking summons people, play or doors will file the discovery away, and a 2 out of 5 adult can be edited upward by a careless first year. Beyond that, the program is the ordinary one: meet the 45 to 90 minutes of exercise, keep company plentiful, and enjoy the strange luxury of a Hound breed whose record reads 2 out of 5 and means it.
Adults enjoy an elegant prime: keep the dog lean, the daily run protected and the bedding soft. Adolescents are gangly and occasionally theatrical, and calm structure carries the household through.
A few record lines deserve a place in this decision. The Borzoi is a Hound breed from Russia, carrying a medium length coat, rated 4 of 5 for grooming effort and 3 of 5 for shedding. Barking 2 of 5, energy 3 of 5, trainability 2 out of 5. A small dog's 2 out of 5 and a giant dog's 2 out of 5 are different acoustic events, which is why the size lines belong on a page about noise: pitch, volume and the neighbor's tolerance all scale with the dog producing them.
Puppies of every breed experiment with their voices, and a young Borzoi is no exception. With the Borzoi, whose typical weight runs 60 to 105 pounds and whose lifespan reaches 9 to 14 years, the honest answer also changes a little across the dog's life, from puppyhood to senior status at about 7 years. The adult pattern, the one the 2 out of 5 score describes, settles in across the first two years as the dog learns which events are routine. Households shape that settling more than they expect: puppies whose barking reliably summons company, play or opened doors keep the habit, while puppies whose calm behavior is what pays grow into the economy of voice their record promises. The breed loads the dice; the first year rolls them.
That is the core of the breed's vocal life, and its strangers rating reads Reserved with strangers. The Borzoi's own numbers frame it: shedding at 3 out of 5, grooming at 4 out of 5, and a height of 26 to 30 inches, which is the household this voice has to fit into. A Borzoi with a bark score of 2 out of 5 announces unfamiliar people as a matter of course; whether the announcement is a single bark or a full report depends on the score, the dog and how the visitor behaves. Friends who visit often graduate quickly to the greeted list. Strangers who behave strangely, lingering at the fence, staring in at the window, get the extended edition whatever the score says.
Read two lines of the record together: barking at 2 out of 5 and apartment suitability rated With enough exercise. For the Borzoi specifically, a Hound dog whose exercise needs run 45 to 90 minutes a day, that plays out in daily routines rather than in occasional big fixes. A low score with a good apartment rating is the easy yes. A high score means the honest answer depends on your walls, your neighbors and your willingness to run the management program on this page every day. What never works is hoping the dog did not get the memo about its own breed: a Borzoi will be exactly as vocal as its record says, in whatever building it lives in.
Last updated: November 11, 2026