We analysed 108 UK towns and cities to find where your four-legged friend is most welcome at the pub, cafe and restaurant. Guildford tops the league. Two British towns scored a flat zero.
Every town sized and coloured by its Good Boy Index, our composite of dog-friendly pubs, cafes and restaurants. Toggle categories to see where each one leads. South-coast and spa towns dominate overall.
Guildford walks it, topping every metric: 72.7% of its pubs (8 of the 11 listed), 16.3% of its 190 restaurants, and 16.7% of its 54 cafes welcome dogs. Seaside staples Poole, Weston-super-Mare and Brighton round out a south-coast sweep.
The champion of pubs isn't the champion of cafes. Hover any dot below to see the same town highlighted across all three categories. Leaders are drawn from towns with at least 20 venues in that category.
Type to search; we'll line them up with the same scale so the bars compare honestly. For huge cities, numbers in brackets are listings sampled (London's listings data is capped at 10,000 per category by the source).
Before anyone pokes holes in the ranking, we did, first.
Redditch's pubs are 100% dog-friendly, because the town has exactly one pub in the dataset. Hemel Hempstead's 100% comes from just six. We excluded any city with fewer than 20 venues in a category from the headline rankings.
Rank 46. Just 7.6% of cafes welcome dogs (276 of 3,632 listed) and 11.4% of restaurants do. Plenty of independent dog-welcomers never tick the "Dog Friendly" box, so the real figure is higher, but even generously adjusted, London is mid-table.
West Bromwich (0 of 117 restaurants, 0 of 5 pubs, 0 of 11 cafes) and Chatham (0 of 44 restaurants, 0 of 4 pubs, 0 of 10 cafes) both scored exactly zero. Almost certainly a tagging problem, not a blanket ban. Venues can fix it in minutes.
An opportunity, not a pile-on. Many of these places have thriving hospitality scenes, they just haven't flagged themselves as dog-welcoming. Venues can update their listings in minutes.
One winner per region, handy if you're wondering where to drive, and a quick answer for local editors. The dataset covers England's 108 biggest towns and cities.
The rankings are built from public "dog-friendly" tags. If your venue welcomes dogs but hasn't told the listings, these two changes take five minutes and update the data for future rankings.
If you don't yet own your listing, claim it first via the same URL, it's free.
A clear "dogs welcome" photo on your profile helps too, Google reads image context.
Type any of Britain's 108 biggest towns and cities. Copy the rank card or share it straight to your group chat.
Click any column header to sort. Tap a row to see the town's data.
| # | Town / City | Good Boy Index | % Restaurants | % Pubs | % Cafes |
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Dr Aimee Warner, resident veterinarian at Waggel, provides insights and commentary on the findings:
“Being able to bring a dog along can make everyday plans much easier for owners, but it is important to remember that not every dog will feel comfortable in busy public places, especially in venues serving food. A dog needs to be calm, able to settle, and confident around people, noise, and other animals before joining owners in that kind of setting.
If the owners are taking their dog to a cafe, pub, or restaurant, it helps to think ahead. Bring water, keep your dog on a lead unless the venue clearly allows otherwise, and choose a quiet spot away from walkways, serving areas, or crowded entrances. It is also worth avoiding sharing food from the table, as many common foods served in hospitality settings can be unsafe for dogs.
Owners should pay close attention to body language as well. If a dog seems restless, overwhelmed, fixated on food, or uncomfortable with the environment, it is usually best to cut the visit short. Dog-friendly should always mean dog-considerate, and the safest outings tend to be the ones where the dog’s comfort comes first.”
Dr Aimee Warner, Resident Veterinarian, WaggelScope: the Good Boy Index measures dog-friendly hospitality only, the share of a town's pubs, cafes and restaurants that publicly welcome dogs. It doesn't score parks, beaches, trails, vets or groomers. A broader "dog-friendly town" index would; this isn't one.
Public listings data from TripAdvisor, cross-referenced against venues tagged with the amenity "Dog Friendly".
Each town's Good Boy Index is the equal-weight composite of three percentages, dog-friendly restaurants, pubs and cafes, normalised to a 0-100 scale.
Towns with fewer than 20 venues in a given category are excluded from that category's leader table. All 108 are shown in the main Good Boy Index.
Absence of a "Dog Friendly" tag doesn't mean a venue bans dogs, it just means they haven't told the internet. Venues can update their listings to update this ranking.
Waggel is a modern pet insurance brand built around the lives pets actually live, which includes a lot of Sunday-roast pub visits. See if we're right for your dog.