TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Here in the Bay area, we know we’re dog-friendly—we take our furry friends to the parks, to the restaurants, to the shops, to the bars. 

It’s always nice, however, when a national online publication points it out. And it’s happened again.

A new report by financial website smartasset has listed both Tampa and St. Petersburg among the top 10 most dog-friendly cities in the nation. Using a variety of metrics such as the number of dog parks per 100,000 residents and the concentrations of veterinarians, pet supply stores and restaurants and retailers that welcome pets, smartasset placed the two Bay area municipalities at numbers six and eight, respectively, out of the 100 large U.S. cities it analyzed.

(The report also factored median home value into its calculations as well, because, you know, it’s a financial site.)

The report praises Tampa’s high number of dog parks—it scored sixth in that particular metric—and its top-20 ranking for its amount of dog-friendly restaurants. As for St. Pete, the ‘Burg did particularly well in vet and pet-store concentration, and landed in the top half of the rankings for median home value, walk score (a measure of the city’s walkability) and dog-friendly restaurants.

To pull its data, smartasset used resources like BringFido.com, walkscore.com, 2018 census data and the Trust for Public Land’s 2020 Amenities and Facilities Report.

So which cities edged out Tampa to make it into the top five? Tucson, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Madison, Wisconsin; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Portland, Oregon.

This isn’t the first time that Bay area cities have been awarded top marks for dog-friendliness. Among the many recent accolades were a number-one ranking for Tampa in a WalletHub list of pet-friendly towns earlier this month (St. Pete ranked 26th), and a third-place finish in the same report in 2019.