Canberra has been named the most dog-friendly place in Australia by a new survey which found the ACT was not as wild about cats.
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It also found Canberra was the third most-friendly city in Australia in general for pets.
But the survey found in "regional ACT", which it classed as "outside the metropolitan area", the love for pets fell significantly.
Regional ACT came in at No.11 for pet-friendliness.
The 2015 Pet Positives Score saw more than 3200 people interviewed and ranked cities and states based on key attributes that Australians valued in a pet-friendly place.
Melbourne and the Gold Coast tied for first as the most pet-friendly cities while Canberra came third. The least pet-friendly place in Australia was regional South Australia..
Canberra tied with Adelaide as the most dog-friendly city in Australia. And Canberra was judged to be the third-friendliest place for cats.
The survey looked at criteria such as as the provision of pet-friendly outdoor spaces, positive pet ownership laws and enforcement, animal welfare provisions including no-kill provisions in shelters, rights for tenants with pets, the availability of businesses for pets such as walkers and groomers, pet registration policies, the provision of public transport for pets and the availability of information on issues such as responsible pet ownership.
Pet owners believed the most important factor overall was improving pet-friendly access to outdoor public areas.
Graham Coddington lives in The Pearl apartments in Kingston after downsizing from Nicholls and believes Canberra "certainly is" a dog-friendly place.
Dogs are allowed in the apartments and his 18-month-old spoodle Toby has lots of canine mates in the neighbourhood.
"There's a very active dog community. The dogs all come out in the afternoon and have a run around the park and jump over each other," he said.
Fleur Flanery, director of City Services, in Territory and Municipal Services, said Canberra did provide a lot of opportunities for owners to enjoy their dogs outside their own homes.
"One of the loveliest things about Canberra is that it has a lot of open space and that's certainly associated with the city being a dog-friendly place," she said.
The ACT Government also provided six fenced dog parks for off-leash exercise which were extremely popular.
"They're actually suffering from their own popularity and we plan to have a maintenance program in place before Christmas because they're basically over-used," Ms Flanery said.
The re-homing rate for Domestic Animal Services was also approximately 98 per cent - one of the highest in the country, she said.
Ms Flanery said the government last year conducted consultation on a review of dog exercise areas in the ACT.
It proved to be one of the most popular consultations conducted, with more than 1700 responses. A response from the government was imminent, clarifying where and how dogs could be exercised.
Ms Flanery said the main concerns to emerge from the consultation were the need for more signs so people knew where dogs could be exercised on or off-leash. Cyclists had also been very "vocal" about owners being responsible for their dogs, especially dogs on extender leads. People also wanted bins provided for the disposal of dog droppings.
The Pet Positives Score, meanwhile, was commissioned for Mars Petcare, a pet product giant, which, to no surprise, has expressed concern about declining pet ownership in Australia and the need for more pet-friendly policies.
University of Western Australia academic Dr Hayley Christian said pets helped improve physical and mental health but also created social capital in cities, encouraging people to get out and interact with others in their neighbourhood.
"Dogs are like babies. They're little social ice-breakers. Anyone will talk to you if you have a dog," she said.
"People who walk their dogs meet more people, have more conversations."
