The breed was originally used to track and bay Ryukyu wild boar in packs, and also rarely hunt birds.

In the early 1980s, Yoshio Aragaki, the founder of the Ryukyu dog Hozonkai, felt a strong urge to save the breed when he managed to find purebred Ryukyu dogs up in Yanbaru.

[citation needed] It is believed that years of living in the rainforest is why the Ryukyu dog has a dewclaw on the back of the foot.

It has been speculated that this would have been evolutionarily favourable to them because of the high incidence of tsunami in Okinawa; they could climb trees quickly to evade the floods.

However, this is unlikely to be true as only a small percentage of Ryukyu dog actually have working rear dewclaws.

The preservation society sees the dewclaws as a throwback from hundreds of years ago when the dogs were genetically closer to wolves, and that the claws are used more often to brake when running.

In Miyakojima, the NPO "Lavida" begun protecting the breed in 2010, and produced 15 puppies in 2017.

[citation needed] There are two distinct lines of Ryukyu dog, the Yanbaru and the Yaeyama.

The Yaeyama line dogs also tend to have longer bodies and deeper chests than Yanbaru.

The society has become inactive online in recent years, but the club itself still active in and around Okinawa.

[13][4] As a preservation and genetic diversity strategy, the club currently has open studbooks and registers dogs on merit if they meet the breed standard.

Western breeders of Ryukyu dog are urged to test for hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, patella luxation, glaucoma, Collie eye anomaly (CEA)[14] and hypothyroidism.

These dogs have already survived one near-extinction, and all current Ryukyu Ken are descendants of the small pack from the 1980s.

Because of this second drop in population, finding two nearly completely unrelated individuals is very difficult, and as such risk of inbreeding is high.

[15] On 2 February 2019, Kai retired from life in the public eye after turning 16, to live in a quiet part of the workshop.

[16] Ume (ウメ) was a very light red brindle, almost fawn-coloured Ryukyu, that lived at the Okinawa Children's Zoo and Museum.