Invasion of the dogs: How surging canine ownership is reshaping cities and businesses

Your next wedding might be full of drooling guests.

The Dog Bar — a sprawling dog venue in Saint Petersburg, Florida —has had at least six (human) proposals, and one wedding. Some of the couples who got engaged met at the dog-catered venue; others just love it so much that that’s where they wanted to make things official.

It’s not just romance brewing at the Dog Bar. Politicians come by to do some stumping (and, presumably, dog petting). Young professionals convene for meet-ups. And a good chunk of customers don’t even have dogs; they just want to hang out amongst both friends human and furry.

It’s all part of a new shift in American public and social life: It’s gone to the dogs.

Virtually all US pet owners now say their furry companions are part of their family — up from 86% of dog owners and 78% of cat owners in 2006. This might be in part because many younger Americans are having kids later than previous generations, or not having them at all.

“People are really combining their social life with their dog ownership nowadays,” Kendal Kulp, the co-founder and CEO of Wagbar, a dog park and bar in Asheville, North Carolina, that regularly hosts weddings, dog birthday bashes, and Halloween parties. The space is currently hosting hurricane relief efforts for the local community.

If you feel like you can’t turn a corner without seeing a four-legged friend, you’re not alone. America’s younger workers are getting hooked on their dogs, and they’re generating their own revenue streams — and popping up everywhere, occasionally to some people’s chagrin.

“The dog today is not the dog of 10 years ago,” Bobby Boivin, the co-owner of Boo’s Dog Bar in Sarasota, Florida, said. “The dog today is literally a child in the family. It is a family member. And well, when people go out to dinner, they want to bring the whole family with them.”

You can feel that at the Dog Bar. Some of their community events are directly inspired by the other type of kids — the human variety. Stephanie Marble, the events coordinator and membership director, said she’s taken inspiration from the birthday parties she threw for her sons when they were little.

“One thing that we do that’s really simple in Florida is we just put sprinklers out in the yard,” Marble said, “because in the summertime when you’re trying to get the kids to do something, get out of the house and stop complaining, you just turn the sprinkler on and throw them all outside in the front yard and they can play for hours with their little pools and their little sprinklers. And so we do that once or twice a year at Dog Bar.”

She offers party packages, Santa for holiday photos, and an Easter egg hunt for dogs. Santa Steve, in particular, is a big hit — his photos with dogs frequently end up in their owner’s digital Christmas cards. He has almost 200 sittings with dogs every year, broken up across two days.

The obsession with canines is shaping our built environments, from bars to apartments to your favorite coffee shop. Our urban infrastructure and lifestyles are increasingly designed around pet ownership. Call it the invasion of the dogs.

Everyone got dogs

In Washington, DC, a single-story laundromat and parking lot just off Logan Circle is being transformed into a 6,000-square-foot “dog-friendly garden” called Dog Daze. The turf and tree-dotted venue will feature vendors serving coffee, beer, pizza, smoothies, and acai bowls. The idea is to create a place where both people and dogs want to be regulars.

“You can go to a dog park, and you can sit down for a quick amount of time, but it’s really more of a check-the-box activity versus actually somewhere you want to stay and hang out,” said Dog Daze managing partner Kyle Cissel. “We wanted to make sure that it was somewhere they felt at home, they’re willing to spend time, and they would actually stay for longer periods of time and make it part of their daily, weekly, and monthly schedule.”

Over the last few decades, the percentage of households with kids has plummeted, while the share that owns a pet has ticked up. The percentage of homebuyers with a child under 18 living with them has fallen by nearly half since the 1980s, according to a NAR analysis of US Census data. At the same time, the share of households with pets has grown from 56% in 1988 to 66% today. And during the pandemic alone, over 23 million US households welcomed dogs into their homes.

“We see dogs all the time where people are like, ‘Yeah, this is my covid baby. I never liked dogs before, but I got one, and now it’s my favorite thing in the world,'” said Kulp, of Wagbar.

That dog boom coincided with a few other key trends: Americans were feeling lonely, they couldn’t afford to sink more money into dating, and larger homes with yards were financially out of reach.

Nearly one in five homebuyers factor pets into their housing and neighborhood choice, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). That’s up from 15% in 2018. Among unmarried couples, the number jumps to 29%. A third of those who consider their pets needs when choosing a home say they want to be close to parks and recreation, NAR found. Inside the home, features like dog and cat doors, outdoor “catios” for felines, and fenced yards are all in demand.

It pays for landlords and homebuilders to provide for their non-human customers. After all, the dog business is booming. Spending on US pet care alone has ballooned from $53.3 billion in 2012 to $147 billion in 2023. Americans are also increasingly spending more time on their fuzzy friends; in 2003, according to the American Time Use Survey, Americans ages 25 to 34 spent just over four minutes a day on average on animal and pet care (that includes Americans without pets). By 2023, it had risen to nine minutes a day.

And while playgrounds have traditionally been a social hub for parents and kids alike, dog amenities offer a new kind of community or third place. That might explain why dog-centric bars and restaurants — where dogs aren’t just a patio feature but the main attraction — are popping up all over the country.

Cissel thinks the future is bright for dog-friendly third spaces. He argued that a dog social club like Dog Daze is similar to a local gym or convenience store — an amenity neighbors would use multiple times a week, as opposed to other leisure amenities like movie theaters. “It’s definitely something that I think you’ll see in every neighborhood in the next 10 years,” he said.

Tara Downs, the owner of the seven-year-old Pub Dog in Colorado, said that she’s noticed some economic shifts from her customers — three or four years ago, someone would come in and order a few beers and food for themselves, and food for their dogs. Now, they’re seeing humans cut back on what they’re spending on themselves but still getting their dogs the same treats.

“So they’re still finding ways to make sure that they’re giving their dogs everything that they want for them — no matter what it means for them in the human sense,” she said.

Take Fred Metzler. He was working a corporate job selling automatic doors when he decided he wanted a change. After adopting two puppies, he fell in love with a dog bar in his neighborhood. He and his former business partner decided to bring that concept down to St. Petersburg, Florida and ended up opening the Dog Bar in 2016.

Metzler also noticed something else over the last decade or so: “The pet industry seemed to be kind of recession-proof. I mean, through ’07, ’08, when things were just terrible, and our business was way down in construction, companies like PetSmart never slowed down.” Even in 2009, PetSmart’s store sales growth slowed down to what the Wall Street Journal hailed as a “respectable” rate that rebounded and then some. After all, as Kulp, the co-founder and CEO of Wagbar, said: “People spend more money on their dogs sometimes than themselves.”

According to a survey from the American Pet Products Association of 10,156 pet owners from December 2023 to January 2024, 27% of dog owners said that they hold holiday or birthday parties for their dogs — up from just 14% in 2018.

In some tangible ways, today’s dog owners indeed see their pets as children. It does make sense: In a country where the cost of living is rising and raising a kid costs $26,000 a year, becoming a dog parent might feel more financially sound — and still help stave off loneliness.

“People are lonely, people take dogs as serious as children,” Luke Silverman, the CEO and co-founder of Bark Social, a social club for dogs and humans with locations across the country, told BI. “All that together brings together these really unique opportunities to create a community.”

What it means to have dogs everywhere

Stephanie Chez, 26, first noticed more dogs around when she spent the summer of 2021 working at IKEA. Since then, she’s seen them everywhere, from Sephora to Target to coffee shops.

Chez loves dogs, but her fiance is allergic. Obviously, she said, some dogs are service animals and people with allergies will have to contend with that. And she enjoys seeing dogs around — but she’s still adjusting to the new normal.

“Sometimes it’s like, oh, did you have to bring your dog into this tiny little coffee shop?” she said.

It’s a question that Americans might be reckoning with more, especially as society becomes more dog-centric. According to the APPA survey, 15% of dog owners are bringing their dogs with them in the car daily to run errands or go about their daily routines — up from 10% in 2018. More dog owners are also bringing their dogs with them on vacation; around a third of them have brought their dogs on a two-plus night trip via car, and around a fifth did the same via plane.

Other pet owners might be looking to do the same. Silverman said that someone once called and asked if they could bring a miniature horse in. His answer: If it was a service animal, yes. The horse ultimately never made an appearance.

Unleashed Hounds and Hops in Minnesota has had one cat come in a backpack, according to founder Kevin Knutson. The cat mostly kept to itself; as long as it wasn’t disrupting the dogs, it was okay for the not-dog to attend.

“It’s the same thing with kids,” Knutson said. “We do allow kids at our facility too, but we have a strict rule about they have to stand up within arms reach of an adult. This is not a playground for kids. This is a playground for dogs.”

Dog bars are also increasingly becoming a site of life’s big moments. Multiple dog bars BI spoke with touted their singles events. Kulp said that couples have met, gotten engaged, and even gotten married at Wagbar.

Some — like the Dog Bar in Florida — also use their spaces as a neutral ground for dog parents to meet adoptable dogs and see if their current pups get along with a potential new sibling. That neutral stomping ground has also made it a good space for broken-up dog couples to do custody hand-offs; Metzler has heard of one or two break-ups happening there, too.

“I think the individual was like, this was a good-energy place. My partner can only get so mad,” he said.

And as dog bars and dog-centric spaces have become a larger part of life for many Americans, some have also become a place for a send-off from life. Kulp said that a customer in his 80s found Wagbar, and came every day like clockwork. When he passed away, his family got in touch; they’d never been to the venue before, but they knew what a big impact it had on his final years. They decided to hold his memorial there — with dogs in attendance.

“That’s just not something you see at very many places and businesses,” Kulp said. To him, that’s a testament to the power of dogs. “They just are a catalyst for that connection and conversation.”