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

152.6
Fort Myers, FL: 34
median large US city: 4.5×
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 152.6 pet-care facilities per 100,000 residents — 155 businesses for 101,581 people. That is 4.5× 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	155	152.6	93	49	20
2	Boca Raton, FL	101,582	132	129.9	76	51	12
3	Wilmington, NC	126,809	130	102.5	55	57	20
4	Knoxville, TN	202,021	201	99.5	108	65	30
5	Miami, FL	489,812	469	95.8	253	181	55
6	Orlando, FL	333,888	318	95.2	173	108	44
7	Edmond, OK	100,479	94	93.6	49	35	14
8	Columbia, SC	147,035	136	92.5	75	45	22
9	Lakeland, FL	125,520	112	89.2	66	38	9
10	Scottsdale, AZ	243,006	216	88.9	125	71	33
11	Bend, OR	107,342	88	82	45	29	16
12	Tampa, FL	413,554	324	78.3	165	122	50
13	Fort Collins, CO	171,500	134	78.1	96	27	16
14	Longmont, CO	100,109	78	77.9	44	23	15
15	Cincinnati, OH	314,367	245	77.9	140	79	42
16	Savannah, GA	149,440	113	75.6	65	35	15
17	Vancouver, WA	199,698	149	74.6	80	48	26
18	Davie, FL	110,851	82	74	46	30	10
19	West Palm Beach, FL	127,189	94	73.9	50	26	21
20	Springfield, MO	169,847	125	73.6	62	50	19
21	Topeka, KS	125,795	92	73.1	48	37	11
22	Fort Lauderdale, FL	188,677	137	72.6	68	57	16
23	Clearwater, FL	114,364	82	71.7	49	26	8
24	Conroe, TX	119,564	84	70.3	38	32	16
25	Dayton, OH	136,688	93	68	48	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.