Some facts about dogs in Worcester, starting with most the most popular names (2019 and 1999):

Information courtesy of the city's new open data portal: https://opendata.worcesterma.gov/ 

Analysis: Bella was the werewolf in Twilight, right? Is this why you all are doing this? Also funny that "Buddy" is the only 2019 name you wouldn't name a baby, but 1999 has more "dog" names (nothing against you if your name is Shadow).

Most popular breeds:

Analysis: I didn't fully appreciate how popular guard dog breeds were in the 90s. Funny that people usually call it the "pit bull law," but pit bulls stayed popular while rottweilers and german shepherds tanked.

Number of registered dogs by year:

Analysis: No clue. I'm not convinced everyone is registering their dog. But there are definitely a lot (7,168 registered dogs in 2019).

Facts about Worcester dogs' sex, both which they are and whether they can (the City calls all of this "gender," breaking from how dogs are usually described):

Analysis: The best estimate I've seen for what percent of American dogs are spayed/neutered is 83 percent, so looks like Worcester is exactly on par with the rest of the country (although that's lower than I would have guessed).

I also do requests! Fair warning, I count talking about dogs in my presence as a request. @writtenbytom @megtighe

Is Max a human name or a dog name?

The blue is what percent of Worcester dogs registered in 2018 have the given name. The red is what percent of U.S. babies born in 2018 have that same name.

I'm getting the human popularity figures from the Social Security Administration. They release enough information that you could do just Massachusetts or cumulative population instead of 2018 alone, but that involves an amount of math that turns this thread from "funny" to "sad"

If you're a stickler, you may note that people tend to give their dogs diminutives ("Bella") and their human kids longer names ("Isabella"). Here is a chart that fixes that:

That's Isabella/Bella, Maxwell/Max, Mary/Molly, Margaret/Maggie and Charles/Charlie. I only did this if the full name is more popular (with humans) than the diminutive - so no Lucia or Lillian, since the shortened forms are more popular