This Iowa City is One of the Worst to Walk Your Dog

The website Lawnstarter has recently published their list of best and worst cities in which to walk your dog. No city in Illinois, Iowa, or Wisconsin managed to squeak into the top 10, but two cities from Illinois and Iowa did unfortunately make an appearance in the bottom 10.

How does one deem a city good or bad in which to walk a dog? Lawnstarter figured out the methodology. They looked at 480 cities across the United States and looked at four key factors:

• Access to dog-friendly trails
• Access to off-leash parks
• Dog walking services
• General safety

Key Findings:

Before we look at the Illinois and Iowa cities that favored poorly in this study, here are some key takeaways from Lawnstarter's findings:

• Cities like Colorado Springs, Colorado (No. 1), San Francisco (No. 2), and Phoenix (No. 3) offer plentiful paths for taking Buddy on a stroll.
• Texas suburbs — Flower Mound (No. 13), Georgetown (No. 16), and Mansfield (No. 19) — outwagged their bustling neighbors Austin (No. 21), Dallas (No. 126), and Fort Worth (No. 172) despite having fewer dog parks and trails. These suburbs bark up safer walking conditions in addition to better-rated routes.
• You might have a ruff time walking the dogs in Kansas City, Kansas (No. 469), Montgomery, Alabama (No. 470), and Memphis, Tennessee (No. 475), though. These cities heeled at the tail end of our ranking with poorly rated trails and high rates of pedestrian fatalities.

Rockford, IL Has it Ruff for Dogs:

Rockford, IL is not known as one of the safest regions in the Land of Lincoln (your chances of being a victim of a theft or property crime is 1-in-24), but now it's also apparently rather unfriendly to dogs. Rockford had a pitiful overall score of 18.41, with considerably low marks in safety (#460/480) and access to professional dog-walking (#369).

Davenport, IA Rounds Out the Bottom 10:

Rounding out the bottom 10 of Lawnstarter's list is Davenport, IA, which surprised me given the fact that it's one-fourth of a major metropolitan. Regardless, Davenport's overall score is in line with Rockford's at 18.66. Its safety rank is surprisingly low (#459/480) and its overall quality ranking is low too (#355/480).

Here are the top 10 worst cities to walk your dog, according to Lawnstarter:

Here are the top 10 best cities to walk your dog, according to Lawnstarter:

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View the complete results of Lawnstarter's dog-walking survey on their website.