FMK Stories · Geography

America's Most Dog-Serviced Cities

Which US city actually has the most pet care per resident? Not the ones the 'most dog-friendly cities' lists name — we counted the facilities.

Facilities per 100,000 residents

Overview

162.4
Fort Myers, FL: 35.3
median large US city: 4.6×
leader vs the median city: 5 of 10
top-ten cities in Florida

The answer is Florida, mostly

Fort Myers, Florida tops the list with 162.4 pet-care facilities per 100,000 residents — 165 businesses for 101,581 people. That is 4.6× the median large American city, which is a much wider gap than the “most dog-friendly cities” lists tend to imply.

The concentration is the real story: 5 of the top ten cities are in Florida. The usual explanations for a dog-friendly city — walkability, parks, young professionals — don’t obviously predict that. Retirement demography and year-round outdoor weather do, and they describe the Florida Gulf coast precisely.

Note what this measures and what it doesn’t. A high rate means a lot of businesses per resident, which is a good proxy for choice and competition. It is not a measure of quality, price, or whether the city is pleasant to walk a dog in. For price we have measured that separately.

The top 25 cities

Cities of 100,000+ residents, ranked by total pet-care facilities per 100,000 people. The category columns show what that supply is actually made of.

#	City	Population	Total	Per 100k	Vet	Groom	Board
1	Fort Myers, FL	101,581	165	162.4	96	52	24
2	Boca Raton, FL	101,582	140	137.8	79	54	12
3	Wilmington, NC	126,809	134	105.7	57	59	21
4	Knoxville, TN	202,021	203	100.5	111	64	30
5	Miami, FL	489,812	489	99.8	265	185	61
6	Orlando, FL	333,888	330	98.8	179	111	47
7	Edmond, OK	100,479	97	96.5	52	34	15
8	Columbia, SC	147,035	137	93.2	78	42	23
9	Lakeland, FL	125,520	115	91.6	68	38	10
10	Bend, OR	107,342	98	91.3	50	31	19
11	Scottsdale, AZ	243,006	221	90.9	125	71	37
12	Longmont, CO	100,109	83	82.9	48	24	15
13	Tampa, FL	413,554	342	82.7	176	129	52
14	Cincinnati, OH	314,367	251	79.8	141	81	46
15	Fort Collins, CO	171,500	136	79.3	96	27	18
16	Davie, FL	110,851	87	78.5	48	32	12
17	Savannah, GA	149,440	117	78.3	66	37	17
18	Clearwater, FL	114,364	88	76.9	53	27	9
19	West Palm Beach, FL	127,189	97	76.3	49	30	21
20	Topeka, KS	125,795	94	74.7	49	37	12
21	Fort Lauderdale, FL	188,677	140	74.2	71	56	16
22	Vancouver, WA	199,698	148	74.1	80	46	27
23	Springfield, MO	169,847	125	73.6	63	49	19
24	Conroe, TX	119,564	85	71.1	39	32	16
25	Dayton, OH	136,688	94	68.8	49	38	11

The caveats

City limits are arbitrary. Facilities are matched to the city named in their address, so a metro split across many small municipalities scatters its supply while a city with generous boundaries absorbs it. This is the single biggest distortion in the table, and it is why we floor the ranking at 100,000 residents rather than ranking every town.

Regional hubs are flattered.A city that serves a large surrounding rural population carries facilities its own residents alone wouldn’t support — a genuine advantage if you live there, but it means the rate overstates how much competition each local resident is really driving.

Supply, not quality. Every facility counts once regardless of size or standard.

Where these numbers come from

We counted every live pet-care facility in our directory — vets, groomers, boarding kennels, daycares and self-serve washes — against Census population for each US city, and ranked the 343 cities with at least 100,000 residents by facilities per 100,000 people.

Every figure on this page is read from our own directory when the page builds, so it moves as the data does. For the same dataset treated at full length — sample bars, percentiles and methodology — see FMK Research.