ryan earns $5 for each small dog he walks and $8 for each latge dog he walks. today he walked 8 dogs and made a total of $55. how many small dogs did ryan walk?

If we divide 55 (the total amount of money he made) by 5 (price to walk one small dog), we get 11. Meaning that the maximum amount of small dogs he could possibly walk and receive that amount of money is 11. However, he only walked 8 dogs. Therefore Ryan would have needed to walk a specific amount of large dogs in order to earn 55 dollars in total.

After doing some process of elimination, I reached this conclusion:

3 small dogs = $15

5 large dogs = $40

The combination of the two would equal $55.

Therefore, the answer would be 3 small dogs.