South Dakota Adopts More Pets than Most States

The average person is a dog person. I'm a cat person. Does that make me above or below average? I'll stick to the high road.

A YouGov survey found that 49 percent of adults in the U.S. consider themselves "dog people" while only 21 percent said they were "cat people" and another 26 percent had no strong preference for one over the other. The same could probably be said for the 605.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, South Dakota has the eighth highest rate of pet adoption in the country, according to Porch.com. That percentage is simply the number of adoptions out of the total number of shelter cats and dogs in the state.

But given the choice, South Dakotans prefer canine to felines. 80 percent of those adoptions were for dogs. Minnesota also sways the same way with two-thirds of their pet adoptions being dogs. Conversely, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, and Montana, all of our bordering states, all adopted more cats than dogs.

North Dakota had the 7th highest rate of adopted cats in the country.

Obviously, the pet best pet for you to choose is the one you feel best about adopting. But I'll give you something to sway you over to the cat side of the aisle.

Do you hate getting out of bed in the middle of the night to pee? Hate it. It's the worst. Now if I had a hyper pet doing their best to not full-on bark to get me to let them out to pee or take a dump, I would be very unhappy. But I never had a cat do that to me. He just crapped in my shoe.

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