There are now more dogs in Tenerife than children

New research shows that there is a registered dog (not all are) in Tenerife for every child aged from newborn to 14 years old, a trend that occurs in all the 31 municipalities of the island, and something that has increased even more after the pandemic in the Canary Islands.

There are 592,322 dogs with microchips in the Canary Islands, of which 101,043 are hunting dogs and 27,833 potentially dangerous breeds (PPP); 234,338 of these are in Tenerife, of which 45,535 are hunting dogs and 11,986 (PPP).

All these dogs are registered by 141,082 owners on the island and is almost the same number as there are children in Tenerife. Another surprising fact is that there are more vets (588) than paediatricians (160) in the province.

The canine census registered in Zoocan for the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro) shows that there are 296,656 dogs, although the number not registered is difficult to know accurately because it depends on the location.

“In Santa Cruz or La Laguna it is estimated that more than 80% of the dogs are registered, however, in other more rural places this could drop to 50%," they said. In addition, it is in these rural areas where the average increases the most, with one dog for every two inhabitants, specifically in Vilaflor, Arico, Arafo, Fasnia, El Rosario, El Tanque, and Tegueste, not including hunting dogs.

At the national level, according to the INE, there are 6,265,153 children under 14 years of age in Spain, while the number of registered pets (dogs, cats, and others) amounts to more than 13 million, of which just over 7 million are dogs, according to data from the Spanish Network for the Identification of Companion Animals (REIAC).

This data is not 100% complete since not all animal owners register their dogs with a microchip, even though it is mandatory, nor do all regions require cats to be registered.

The result is clear, Spanish households already have more animals than children. This year, births registered the lowest number in the last eight decades. In the province of Tenerife, the average fertility of a woman in 1975 was 3.2 children, while last year that figure did not even reach one child per woman (0.88), the second lowest average in Europe, quite the opposite of what happened in the Canary Islands in the sixties and seventies, where having a large family was the norm and there was a baby boom.

Among the factors and reasons for this imbalance, i.e. the lack of children born between 1980 and 2000, whether due to economic or work difficulties, is also due to the aging of the population. More and more people live alone and are accompanied by a four-legged friend to deal with this helplessness, as has been shown during the pandemic.

According to market research conducted in the United States, 80% of pet owners say that their dog makes them feel less alone. 89% of people who got a pet because of loneliness say it has helped them feel less lonely. A quarter of the pet owners interviewed stated that they had acquired an animal to improve their mental health.