Top Paw

Texas fetches top honors as most pet-friendly place in the country

We Work Barton Springs Event Bulldog Stella Rose

Who's a good dog?

Photo by Shelley Neuman

Obsessed with your pet? Texans sure are — in fact, we're considered the most pet-friendly state in the nation according to one new ranking.

Joy Organics, a company that sells CBD tinctures, recently did a study to see which state is the best for pets and their owners, and Texans made their voices, howls, and purrs heard loud and clear.

There were five categories: average spend on pets by state, the amount of pet shelters or adoption centers, pet ownership by state, social media accounts for pets, and the amount of pet-friendly eateries. "Pet" is not exactly defined here, but we're going to assume Joy Organics means dogs, cats, and perhaps also gerbils, chinchillas, hamsters, and the like?

Data was collected from a variety of sources, including Twitter, sales figures from Bixbi (a dog food and treat brand), worldpopulationreview.com, PetFinder, and petfriendlyrestaurants.com.

Thanks to the pandemic, 2020 was a banner year for pets and the pet industry, with the American Pet Products Association reporting that the overall annual spend within the industry surged to a record-breaking $100 billion.

Our part in that was spending about $104 per order, the fifth highest in U.S. and $30 over the national average. That adds up when you consider 58 percent of Texas families have a pet.

Chances are good that we adopted those pets from a shelter, as the Lone Star State has 3.6 pet shelters per 100,000 people, tying for ninth place with South Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan.

We're also pretty pumped to take our pups along when we go out, especially since so many eateries welcome our furry friends. Texas boasts 3.8 pet-friendly restaurants per 100,000 residents, eclipsing the average of 2.8 per 100,000.

And because we feel the need to post our meals (and pretty much everything else) online, Texans run the second most social media accounts dedicated to just pets — that's four times the national average.

Coming in close behind Texas are Florida and South Carolina, while Alaska, South Dakota, and Iowa rank as the least pet-friendly states.

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More Foraging

Free 'food forest' in East Austin expands with thousands of new plants

Angelina Alanis at Festival Beach Food Forest

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Angelina Alanis gives a tour of the garden, which is open to anyone.

In East Austin, there is an edible forest garden called Festival Beach Food Forest where anyone can walk around and harvest free produce, nuts, medicinal plant leaves and herbs. And over the summer, it grew to several times its size.

The forest has fig trees, peach trees, grapevines, asparagus and more that's not in season right now. You can grab passionfruit and plants like yaupon holly, with leaves that can make a caffeinated tea, rosemary and lemon balm.

"[Lemon balm] is part of the mint family," said Angelina Alanis, communication and partnership coordinator for Festival Beach Food Forest. "It has a lemony taste but it's good for a nervous stomach. I'm prone to anxiety so I always grab a hunk."

The food forest is located right next to Interstate 35 and Lady Bird Lake on 29 Waller St., near a part of town that's known for being a food desert, lacking grocery stores.

"There's as much as a 20-year life expectancy difference between parts of East and West Austin, and a lot of that comes down to food access, health care access and also access to nature."

Alanis said for the past nine years, the volunteer-based grassroots project been helping with the issue and just recently expanded in the summer from two-thirds of an acre of city parkland to over 3.5 acres.

"We're going to have hundreds of new trees," said Alanis. "We've already planted 150 new trees in the area and then thousands of plants on the ground."

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They also plan to add a community kitchen and a pavilion to do things like cooking classes or informational sessions.

Read the full story at KVUE.com.

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