At a glance
License activity peaked in 2018.
The city logged 21,666 license starts that year. The annual count has eased since, while the mix of names and breeds keeps changing.
License term starts by year · 2026 is partial through July 16
The names
Bella owns the decade. Luna owns the moment.
Bella is the all-time leader, but Luna climbed from #22 in 2016 to #1 in 2021—and stayed there through 2025.
Rank among dog names in each year’s license records · lower is more popular · Bella and Luna highlighted, the rest of the top six in gray
The leaderboard
The 16 most common names across all 116,813 registry profiles.
- 1 Bella 1,026 0.88% of profiles
- 2 Max 861 0.74% of profiles
- 3 Charlie 851 0.73% of profiles
- 4 Luna 846 0.72% of profiles
- 5 Lucy 712 0.61% of profiles
- 6 Coco 672 0.58% of profiles
- 7 Rocky 640 0.55% of profiles
- 8 Lola 607 0.52% of profiles
- 9 Daisy 597 0.51% of profiles
- 10 Bailey 517 0.44% of profiles
- 11 Cooper 495 0.42% of profiles
- 12 Buddy 495 0.42% of profiles
- 13 Milo 471 0.40% of profiles
- 14 Penny 466 0.40% of profiles
- 15 Stella 410 0.35% of profiles
- 16 Molly 398 0.34% of profiles
The neighborhoods
Lakeview leads the neighborhood map.
Its ZIP-area group contributes 14,544 records—about twice Logan Square. Switch the view to see each area’s common breed, signature breed, or favorite name.
Neighborhoods are familiar primary labels assigned from ZIP codes; they are not official community-area boundaries.
Breed trends
Goldendoodles made the decade’s biggest jump.
Their share rose 2.24 percentage points from 2016 to 2025. Golden Retrievers and Australian Shepherds are climbing too.
Share of all license records in each full calendar year, 2016–2025 · tap a line or label to focus
Showing all breed trends.
Climbing fastest
Change in yearly share.
Cooling off
Change in yearly share.
The typical dog
Meet Chicago’s dog, by the numbers.
No single pup represents a city. But combine the most common answers in the license data and a clear portrait appears.
Chicago’s data dog
Bella
Black Pitbull · Lakeview
- Name
- Bella Most common of 24,098 names
- Breed
- Pitbull Most common specific breed
- Coat
- Black Most common coat color
- Neighborhood
- Lakeview Largest ZIP-based group
- Sex split
- 55% / 45% Male / female coded profiles
- Spay or neuter
- 88% Share of coded profiles
A playful composite of 115,157 mapped profiles—not one real dog.
Beyond the registry
A license record says who a dog is. A walk shows what they need.
The Tails Dog Walking Index uses completed, tracked walks—not survey guesses—to show how dogs move through a real day. It is a different dataset with a useful second view of dog life.
881 completed walks · updated July 16, 2026
Tails original research
See the walk behind the dog.
Explore the full public benchmark, with dated samples, methodology, and charts built from aggregate Tails walk data.
Explore dog walking statisticsA new slice
Dog breeds have their own color palettes.
Black dominates Labrador records; black-and-tan dominates German Shepherds. This heatmap shows how much of each breed’s registry profile carries a leading coat label.
Cell values are the share of that breed’s profiles carrying the coat label.
One in how many?
How rare is your dog?
Choose a breed, coat color, and neighborhood to find matching profiles in the public dataset.
Checked against 115,157 mapped registry profiles from the public file.
Finding matches in the public file.
LoadingFinding matches in the public file.
By the name
Look up any dog name.
Search all 24,098 dog names to see rank, count, gender split, and the most-associated breed.
Search a name to see its registry profile.
About the data
One useful note on the numbers.
The City of Chicago supplied license records, not a list of unique dogs. Renewals can repeat the same dog, so rankings use a lighter deduplication called a registry profile—a distinct combination of name, breed, color, gender, and location fields.
We use the large public sample as a representative portrait of licensed dogs, not a census of every dog. No owner information or dog-level location is published.
The data shows who dogs are. Tails helps care for yours.
Find vetted, background-checked caregivers who fit your dog, follow GPS-tracked walks, and get real-time updates in one simple app.
- Care matched to your dog’s age, energy, and needs
- Walks, boarding, and daycare in one place
- Free to download—no subscription required
