Licensing your dog in NYC is the law. Why do so few people do it?

Hey, you got a license for that dog?

For more than 130 years, state law has required New Yorkers to have a license for their dogs. It is rarely enforced, but there are some perks to following the letter of the law, especially if Fido wanders off his leash.

A more comprehensive registry could also offer New Yorkers another way to explore one of the city’s most time-honored traditions: sizing each other up by borough.

On March 8, 1894, New York state passed what became the first animal control ordinance in the United States. The law aimed to control the dog population.

Back then, licenses cost $2. Today, the licenses through the Department of Health cost $8.50 for neutered or spayed dogs, but the process is largely bureaucratic and functions more like a suggestion.

Several dog owners said they only knew about the requirement to license their dogs from friends, pet shops or shelters.

"If the shelter staff hadn't mentioned it, I never would have known,” said Jiayan Fung, a 30-year-old nurse who adopted her pit bull, Cider, in 2023.

Licenses can be renewed annually or every five years. Owners choose whether to pay year by year or prepay. For unaltered dogs over four months old, it's $34 annually.

Yi Jer Tan, 33, a medical researcher from Malaysia, took in his Labrador, Hachi. He had recently adopted it from a coworker who was starting a family and found that caring for a big, energetic lab in a Manhattan apartment was too much.

At first, he knew little to nothing about licensing.

"My colleague just mentioned it in passing," he said. He put together the details himself, scrolling through blogs, asking friends and eventually digging through the city's website.

City records show dog licenses climbed steadily through the late 2010s, then peaked in 2020 at more than 100,000 registered pets. That was the year many New Yorkers adopted or bought pandemic puppies.

The trend didn't last. By 2021, registrations dropped. They fell by more than half the next year, down to fewer than 50,000 licenses. The numbers have fluctuated since, but have remained below the 2020 high.

Health officials said that year's jump wasn’t purely a reflection of the pandemic-fueled dog craze. The city was actively promoting licensing, running public campaigns and holding more in-person registration events.

Steve Gruber, a spokesperson for the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, said his organization hosted large adoption events several times a year with the Department of Health's licensing team table.

"The response was tremendous because our events drew a lot of people," he said. "Many people came actually specifically so that they could get their dog licenses."

Those kinds of events have become less common.

"We're not doing that now to that degree," Gruber said. His organization still mentions licensing on their website, but the visibility isn't the same. "I imagine there are fewer on-site events where people can come and get their dog licenses," he said.

The Department of Health promotes licensing mainly through social media and partnerships with pet shops, boarding facilities and rescue groups.

The city hosted two licensing events in September, one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn. Four dog owners bought licenses that week, according to the health department.

There’s little incentive for pet owners to live within the law. The city’s data on criminal and civil court summons does not appear to track citations related to a lack of a dog license. Instead, owners are most often cited for things like failing to have their dog on a leash or not picking up their pet's feces.

The city said licensing has its benefits. Since 2023, more than 180 lost dogs with licenses have been returned home through the city's "dog eLocator" system. Licensed dogs can run off-leash at city dog runs with proof of license and rabies vaccination. When a dog bites someone, the license makes it easier to access vaccination records. The system also helps health officials track rabies vaccination citywide.

As it turns out, dogs that do get licensed also reveal something about New Yorkers and their dogs. Records from the past decade show New York overwhelmingly registers small breeds, the kind that fit in an apartment or ride the subway in a bag.

Yorkshire Terriers, Shih Tzus and Chihuahuas top the list. All three typically weigh under 15 pounds.

Borough preferences differ. Manhattan and Brooklyn favor apartment-sized breeds like Yorkies and Shih Tzus, according to the records. Queens goes the same way, with extra love for Maltese.

Staten Island is the outlier. Small dogs are common there too, but Labradors and other large breeds appear far more often, a sign of bigger homes and yards.