SummaryFine needle aspiration biopsy was performed on 147 skin tumors in 119 dogs over a 4‐year period. Both air‐dried smears (Wright's stain) and wet‐fixed smears (Papanicolaou's stain) were prepared from the aspirates from each tumor and the cytological diagnosis was correlated with histology. In 105 tumors, the cytological and histological interpretations agreed.Histologically, there were 36 stromal tumors, including 19 fibrosarcomas and nine hemangiosarcomas. Cytologically, 12 of the fibrosarcomas and five of the hemangiosarcomas were interpreted correctly as malignant tumors. All 11 melanomas and all 37 mast cell tumors were identified correctly cytologically, while nine of the 11 squamous cell carcinomas, 15 of 21 adenocarcinomas and eight of 19 mammary carcinomas were interpreted as malignant using aspiration biopsy.The fine‐needle technique also identified 16 dogs with metastases to the regional lymph nodes before surgical biopsies were undertaken. Benign tumors were incorrectly described as malignancies in only thre