Rather not deal with your own yard?
We scoop Chittenden County yards on a schedule and take the waste with us.
The count, town by town
Sort by any measure. Most recent reported year per town.
| Town | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milton (FY2025) | 1,045 | 97.5 | 0.25 | 20.3 |
| Burlington (FY2025) | 960 | 21.5 | 0.06 | 93.1 |
| Essex (2025) | 777 | 67.6 | 0.16 | 22.7 |
| Jericho (2025) | 773 | 151.4 | 0.37 | 21.8 |
| Colchester (FY2025) | 669 | 38.2 | 0.09 | 18.4 |
| Williston (2024) | 660 | 65.3 | 0.15 | 21.9 |
| Hinesburg (2024) | 503 | 107.1 | 0.23 | 12.8 |
| Richmond (FY2024) | 340 | 81.6 | 0.18 | 10.6 |
| Charlotte (FY2024) | 321 | 82.1 | 0.18 | 7.8 |
| Westford (2024) | 314 | 152.3 | 0.39 | 8.0 |
Rather not deal with your own yard?
We scoop Chittenden County yards on a schedule and take the waste with us.
The official count is a floor, not a count
Vermont law requires every dog over six months old to be licensed by April 1. So these numbers should approach the true population — but they don't come close, and the clerks say so themselves. South Burlington's clerk estimated only ~30% of dogs were registered; Richmond's report flatly notes "many dogs are not registered"; Jericho logged 42 delinquent dogs in a single year. At the national ownership rate, these towns would hold roughly three times as many dogs as are licensed.
The towns we couldn't count (yet)
A few towns don't publish a usable dog-only number online:
- South Burlington — no published count; clerk est. ~30% registered
- Winooski — count not published
- Essex Junction — shared clerk with Essex town; not separately published
- Shelburne — only combined cat+dog figure (683) published
- Underhill — report PDFs behind Cloudflare challenge
- Huntington — no head-count published; 2017 est. ~half of ~500 registered
- St. George — not researched in v1
- Bolton — not researched in v1
Credit where due: Underhill's town site actually blocked our automated request behind a security challenge — good digital hygiene, even if it cost us a data point. South Burlington and Winooski, two of the county's biggest towns, publish full annual reports that somehow leave the dog tally out entirely. We'll take the count by carrier pigeon if we have to.
Sources: each town's annual report, U.S. Census, and AVMA ownership data. Waste tonnage is an estimate at 274 lb per dog per year. We don't fabricate figures — gaps stay gaps.