Though space is at a premium in New York City, that doesn’t deter its residents from embracing pet parenthood. New Yorkers love dogs, and the numbers prove it. Around 425,000 dogs live in the Big Apple. That’s more than the human population of Oakland, California!
In honor of National Dog Day, Rover partnered with the NYC real estate experts at StreetEasy to discover the most popular dog breeds and dog sizes in NYC neighborhoods, as well as the best neighborhoods for New York City’s dogs by the numbers.
We looked at the share of pet-friendly rental units listed on StreetEasy, the amount of dog sitters on Rover, the number of dog parks and off-leash areas according to the City of New York, and the number of nearby veterinarians on Yelp.
The ten neighborhoods that offer top-notch pet-friendly amenities and a community that caters to dogs and their owners are:
See the map below for how each NYC neighborhood fares in its dog-friendly offerings. The darker the neighborhood, the more dog-friendly amenities it provides.
The Top 5 Most Dog-Friendly Neighborhoods by Borough
| Manhattan |
| 1. Battery Park City |
| 2. Tribeca |
| 3. Financial District |
| 4. Roosevelt Island |
| 5. Soho |
| Brooklyn |
| 1. DUMBO |
| 2. Columbia St / Waterfront District |
| 3. Downtown Brooklyn |
| 4. Seagate |
| 5. Brooklyn Heights |
| Queens |
| 1. Alley Park |
| 2. Corona |
| 3. New Hyde Park |
| 4. Whitestone |
| 5. Long Island City |
| Bronx |
| 1. Riverdale |
| 2. Hunts Point |
| 3. Kingsbridge |
| 4. Bedford Park |
| 5. Tremont |
| Staten Island |
| 1. Silver Lake |
| 2. New Brighton |
| 3. Pleasant Plains |
| 4. Sunnyside |
| 5. Princes Bay |
NYC’s Most Popular Breeds
In New York City, the breeds you’ll most commonly see taking to the streets are:
| 1. Yorkshire Terrier | 6. Poodle |
| 2. Shih Tzu | 7. French Bulldog |
| 3. Chihuahua | 8. Pitbull Mix |
| 4. Labrador Retriever | 9. Dachshund |
| 5. Maltese | 10. American Pit Bull Terrier |
See the map below for each neighborhood’s most popular breed.
From Small Breeds to Giant Breeds
Rover dug through our data to get the scoop on NYC’s dog size data. It’s no surprise that small dogs are popular, making up 42 percent of NYC’s total dog population. But large breeds also lead a great life in the city—even if their owners have to get creative.
Medium and large dogs make up the rest of the canine population, coming in at 31 and 26 percent, respectively. The remaining 1 percent of the city’s dog population goes to giant dogs.
How We Did It: the Details
Our “Dog-Friendly Index” includes four key variables:
- The share of pet-friendly rental units in each neighborhood, recorded on StreetEasy from January to July 2017
- The share of dog sitters in each neighborhood, recorded by Rover from June to July 2017
- The amount of dog parks, dog runs and off-leash areas in each neighborhood, recorded by the City of New York and updated as of April 2017
- The share of veterinarians in each neighborhood, recorded by Yelp from June to July 2017
To account for differences in neighborhood size, we normalized the data according to each neighborhood’s population estimate to track metrics on a per capita basis.
Dog parks and off-leash areas reported by the City of New York were geocoded by the park name and address. For each neighborhood, we calculated the number of dog parks and off-leash areas with a buffer of 1 km to account for any sites that exist within large parks.
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Featured image: Louboutina the ‘hugging dog’ (Chona Kasinger)
