This One’s For the Dogs. Or: Who’s a Good Upper West Sider?

By Yvonne Vávra

Every dog has its day. But this weekend, they get two. Today, at the Riverside Park Pup Halloween Parade, there’ll be sashaying, soaking up adoration, and snuffling their way through a sensory extravaganza. And treats galore. Tomorrow? Treats galore. Treats unleashed. Treats as the main event, in fact. Upper West Side businesses along Columbus Avenue and beyond will roll out the red carpet—in some cases, literally—and shower our dogs with treats, treats, and more treats.

A man who definitely deserves a whole lot of treats is Firat Ciftci, a Brooklyn-based software engineer who sent me down a delightful doggy rabbit hole this week with a digital map he created of every dog in New York City. Using city dog-license data, he mapped all 96,459 licensed dogs to the neighborhoods where they live, uncovering some fascinating findings. Turns out, the French bulldog boom ran out of steam in 2016, while doodles and other poodle mixes continue to climb in popularity. Thanks to Ciftci, we now know that the name Bernie saw a huge spike in 2016, when Bernie Sanders ran for president, and that Labradors top the list as the most common breed in 75 of the city’s 197 neighborhoods, more neighborhoods than any other breed.

We have 489 Labradors. Yes, nearly 500 of our 5,875 licensed Upper West Side dogs are Labs or Lab mixes. No other Manhattan neighborhood has more. And nobody has more Lunas, either. While Luna is the most common dog name in all of New York City, we’re leading the charts with 62 of them. A shoutout to our Charlies, though: at least south of 72nd Street, they outnumber the Lunas, 24 to 18.

One of our very good boys is my companion, Louie. He’s one of 234 Louies in the city and one of 702 Boston Terriers. According to the map, at almost 12, he’s older than 79% of the city’s licensed dogs and would blend in best in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But that’s not where he belongs. That would be right here by my feet, where he’s been teaching me about life.

Louie went blind this year and lost an eye. Not that he’d care. Always focused on possibilities, never limitations, he’s forever forging ahead, following his instincts, and insisting on his right to run into walls. When I try to hold him back, he looks at me like, “Girl, what part of ‘we’re going THERE’ do you not understand?!” We’re bumping into obstacles, but we’re having fun.

It’s because of him that I’m discovering whole new worlds. I spend hours upon hours standing in the middle of any given block, waiting for him to finish checking out one stink or another. He’s a sniffer, you see. I never interrupt him, which is only fair, since he doesn’t stop me from watching my umpteenth episode of Whatever, either. And chances are that whatever he’s sniffing out around that little fleck of pee makes for a more compelling story than whatever I’m watching.

So there I am, doing a sometimes painful amount of nothing while waiting for him. Until it stops being painful. My mind lets go of the need to control my time and feels free to wander. It’s amazing what happens when you have nothing to do but be. I start noticing, observing, wondering. Because Louie? With a single sniff, he knows who was here before us, what they had for breakfast, whether they were stressed, sick, or horny, and who knows what else. Our block, the same one I know so well, is an entirely different world to him, one that remains obscure and inaccessible to me. What else do I not know about the things I know?

It’s nice to have your mind blown once in a while, and that’s the gift our dogs give us. Because would I ever stand in the middle of any given block, with nothing better to do than wonder about parallel universes, if I weren’t on a leash? Well, this is New York, so let’s not rule it out.

So here’s to all the good boys and girls of the Upper West Side, who will have no idea what day it is, why they’re wearing a wig, or why the world seems to have turned upside down, what with everyone shoving treats in their faces. As ever, they will not question our choices, wear their costumes with stoic resignation, and work the crowds. And come Sunday night, they’ll head home dog-tired, leaving their reviews of the festivities for generations of neighborhood dogs to come, one lamppost at a time.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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