About Pup Census

What this is

Pup Census is a record of what people name their dogs, built entirely from pet license data that city governments publish as open data. Today that means New York City: 302,588 individual dogs, 3,594 names, 135 breeds and 83 ZIP codes. Nothing here is a survey, a poll or an estimate. Every figure is a count of filed license records, and you can download the aggregates and check any of it yourself.

The number that matters most is the one a site like this is tempted to leave out. About 80% of New York City dogs are never licensed, and licensing is not evenly spread across the city, so every figure here describes licensed dogs and only licensed dogs. The method page sets out what that does and does not let you conclude.

Who makes it

Pup Census is written and maintained by Dan Wiggs, a dog owner and a geek who got curious about whether the name on a license tag says anything about the neighborhood it came from. It turns out it says a lot. This is an independent project run by one person. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the City of New York or any other government agency.

How the numbers are made

• License renewals are collapsed to individual animals, so a dog licensed six times is counted once.
• Names are normalized for case and punctuation, and placeholder entries are removed.
• Breed free text is reduced to a single primary breed.
• Names, breeds and ZIP codes are published only above a minimum count, so one record cannot become a trend.
• Comparisons are rates per 10,000 licensed dogs within a group, never raw counts across groups of different sizes.

Where the records are ambiguous, the ambiguity gets published rather than resolved. Some dogs are recorded with their breed in the name field, and nothing in the data separates that from an owner who really did name a dog after its breed. Those entries are flagged and footnoted, not deleted. Deleting them would be guessing.

How often it changes

New York City republishes this dataset roughly once a year, by hand. The current version was retrieved on August 21, 2026 and covers licenses through December 31, 2025. When the city publishes a new version, the site is rebuilt from it and the date in the footer changes. There is no live feed, and implying one would be false.

Rules this site holds itself to

• Owner names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses are never published, from any city. Datasets that carry them are excluded rather than filtered.
• The source, the version and the modifications are stated on every page, because the license the data comes under requires it.
• The limitations get stated before anyone else has to point them out.
• Some links are affiliate links, disclosed on the privacy page. They never change what the data says.

Corrections and contact

If something here is wrong, say so and it will be fixed: [email protected]. Journalists are welcome to use these figures with attribution, and I am happy to pull a custom cut for a story. To have a record removed, no questions asked, write to [email protected].