News

Which WNC city ranks 2nd 'Most Dog Friendly' in the U.S.?

By Lightning Reports, Published: August 22, 2024

To mark National Dog Day on Aug. 26, LawnStarter fetched 2024's Most Dog-Friendly Cities.

LawnStarter compared the 500 biggest U.S. cities based on five categories: dog-friendly housing and businesses, friendliness of dog-related laws and affordability of canine services like training and dog sitting among 34 total metrics. Key takeaways were:

• Cities lacking dog-friendly housing can be ruff for pup parents to navigate. Southern and Southwestern cities like Sandy Springs, Georgia(No. 213), Santa Fe, New Mexico (No. 3), and Allen, Texas (No. 81), offer the best access to dog-friendly digs with plenty of rentals allowing dogs, spacious homes, and large backyards.
• Big cities like New York (No. 27), Austin, Texas (No. 10), and Los Angeles (No. 28) claim the most pup-furrendly businesses. Less populated places like Arizona cities Scottsdale (No. 1), and Tucson, (No. 4), and Asheville, North Carolina, (No. 2), run with the big dogs, enjoying great access to accommodations, restaurants, and shopping centers allowing pooches.
• Northern cities like Cicero, Illinois (No. 498), and Paterson, New Jersey (No. 499), land in the doghouse, alongside Waterbury, Connecticut, inlast place. These cities lack access to veterinarians, dog sitters, and dog parks, and have low rates of dog-friendly rentals.

Unmentioned by the surveyor were the more than two dozen brewpubs in Asheville, which are famously dog friendly.