Did you ever wonder how many dogs were in your community? We took a trip to Oakville, Ontario this summer and everywhere we looked, we saw people out walking their dogs.
The town of Oakville hosts a large school for training guide dogs for the blind – maybe there are lots of foster families in the area, starting dogs out with the proper obedience training before turning them over to the school.
Anyways, it got me to wondering how many dogs might live in my hometown.
From The National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, here is a quick way you can estimate the number of dogs in your community.
1. Take your town’s population and divide it by 2.67 to get the number of households.
2. Take the answer from 1 and multiply it by 0.361 to get the number of households that are likely to own dogs
3. Take the answer from 2 and multiply it by 1.6 to get the total dog population, to account for the households that have more than 1 dog.
You can get your town’s population from http://www.city-data.com/. Now get out your calculator and get busy!
BTW, here are the results for Canton, Ohio:
80,806 people / 2.67 people per household = 30,264 households
30,264 households x 0.361 percent likely to own dogs = 10,925 dog-owning households
10,925 dog-owning households x 1.6 dogs per household = 17,481 dogs
Until next time,
Good day, and good dog!