Dog sushi, dog movie screenings, dog marathons, and now even a dog festival … Tel Aviv’s famous love affair with its pooches is growing all the time.

While dogs are greatly loved all over Israel, Tel Aviv takes it to a different level. There are 25,000 registered hounds in Tel Aviv – that’s one pooch to every 17 human city-dwellers. The city claims it is the highest per-capita ratio of dogs to people in the world.

“Tel Aviv is very accessible, flat and small. People walk everywhere and spend a lot of their time outdoors. This translates into a city where it is easy to have a dog that joins you for walks and your routine outdoors activities,” says Mira Marcus, international press director for Tel Aviv Global. “For anyone roaming the streets of Tel Aviv it is obvious that dogs are a big part of the city.”

And with 318 days of sunshine on average per year, Tel Aviv has “perfect dog-walking weather,” Marcus tells ISRAEL21c.

There are 70 off-leash dog parks in Tel Aviv-Yafo; that’s 1.3 dog parks for every square kilometer. Dogs have designated beaches where they can roam freely, nearly every eatery has a water bowl outside for Fido to refresh, and the shopping malls have dog-food vending machines.

The municipality prioritizes doggie welfare with a no-kill shelter, a 24/7 vet service for homeless animals, and a city animal patrol that checks complaints regarding animal abuse. The city also runs a unique project enabling animal lovers to adopt abandoned dogs.