Pets are like family. They bring so much joy and entertainment to our lives, especially in recent months as we all spent more time at home. Some of our pets loved that extra quality time while others may not have appreciated it quite so much. Either way, people who live with pets generally love them.
In fact, we tend to love our pets so much that our decisions on where to live might even be heavily influenced by our pets. This is likely no surprise to anyone with a beloved pet or two. WalletHub recently published some facts about people and their pets, including which are some of the friendliest places to live if you own a pet.
Let’s explore the top five pet-friendly places to live along with how this list came to be determined.
What Makes a City Pet-Friendly?
Before discovering some of the top places to live for pets and their owners, let’s take a look at what exactly goes into this ranking.
WalletHub notes that they looked at 100 cities in the U.S. They reviewed three main categories, each with its own variety of factors, when considering how to rank these various cities. The categories add up to 100 points, and the higher a city scored on this 100-point scale, the more pet-friendly it was determined to be.
Other calculations were performed based on population size, but essentially these three categories helped WalletHub decide on the best cities for pets.
Pet Costs
The first category pertains to the costs of having a pet. Here, they reviewed things like each city’s costs for pet health care, any payment minimums at the veterinarian’s office and the cost of insurance for dogs.
Pet Wellbeing
In this category worth 50 points, WalletHub’s experts reviewed a number of things that influence how healthy pets might be in a given city. The number of veterinarians, how friendly apartments are to pets, the number of animal shelters and much more weighed in here.
Outdoor Lifestyle
The third category, at 25 points, looks at outdoor lifestyle options for pets in each city. Weather, dog parks and other outdoor-related factors were examined to determine how pet-friendly the outdoor opportunities are.
Top 5 Pet-Friendly Cities
Once all those measurements were taken, WalletHub ranked the 100 cities from most pet-friendly to less pet-friendly. The coveted first place position went to Scottsdale, Arizona, with Tampa, Florida, following at a pretty close second place. Orlando, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada, came next followed by Birmingham, Alabama.
These cities are ranked in terms of the highest total score, but WalletHub also provides scores on the individual categories noted above. It can be helpful to consult their chart if you’re considering a move with your pet but are more concerned about outdoor opportunities instead of a total score, for example.
Blockchain Helping Pets
If you’re not considering a move anytime soon, or if you would love to have a pet but just aren’t able to right now, there are other ways to do pet-friendly things.
For instance, the company Pawtocol is working with rescue shelters in Costa Rica. This partnership develops pet ‘profiles’ in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be purchased. It seems the goal is to let people know about these pets that need some help and hopefully find new, loving homes for them.
Putting Pets First
With the rise of remote work, the opportunity to move to anywhere you’d like is quite tempting. It can be more challenging to pick somewhere new if you have a pet, but fortunately, WalletHub is helping out with their list of top pet-friendly cities. And if you’re inclined to stay put but still want to find pet-friendly things to do, consider donating to animal shelters or buying an NFT that helps pets in need.
