Photo by Amber Wilkie

I got a dog six months ago, but one man can only do so much to raise the city’s dismal pet ownership rate. The American Veterinary Medical Association has released its annual survey of pet ownership rates in the U.S., and D.C. comes in dead last—by a lot.

According to the survey, the pet ownership rate in D.C. stands at 21.9 percent, while second-to-last Massachusetts hits 50.4 percent. Maryland didn’t fare that well either, ranking in the bottom 10 with a rate of 52.9 percent. The top five states are Vermont (70.8 percent), New Mexico (67.6 percent), South Dakota (65.6 percent), Oregon (63.6 percent), and Maine (62.9 percent).

Not surprisingly, we ranked dead last for the two most common pets: cats and dogs. Only 11.6 percent of D.C. households have feline companions (second-to-last Utah is at 24.6 percent, national leader is Vermont at 49.5 percent), while 13.1 percent of local households opt for dogs (it’s 23.6 percent in Massachusetts and 47.9 percent in Arkansas).

You could argue that the numbers make sense: this is a primarily urban area, and people work a lot. Still, our ownership rates are below even those in other urban jurisdictions; in New York City, for one, one in three households owns a pet.