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For Riverside County residents Allison Sun and Cesar Ferreyra, there is no other dog like their husky, Max.
They both individually wanted a dog named Max when they were kids. Sun pictured a smaller dog — a Yorkie, maybe, but Ferreyra said he had always wanted a husky and that’s what the couple got: a big, beautiful tawny-colored Husky.
“He just looks like a Max,” Ferreyra said on a Saturday in April at Carlson Dog Park in Riverside. “I’ve never met a dog like Max.”
While Max might have a personality all his own, he shares his name with almost 700 dogs registered in Riverside County.
Max is the fourth most-common dog name in the county and the second most-common male dog name, according to data from the Riverside County Department of Animal Services.
A Molly by any other name
For the most part, people name their dogs what you’d assume they would. There are lots of Lalas, Cookies, Shadows and Peanuts in the data.
The 10 most common names of registered dogs are:
Some dog owners got more creative with their furry friend’s name, though.
If you call Pugsley, for example, 12 dogs will come but only eight of them will be a pug or pug mix.
Included in the data is a dachshund named Ragoo and an Akita named Toshiba. There are nine dogs named “Chewbacca,” most of whom are small dogs like chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers. There are more, if you count the incorrectly spelled Chewbaccas.
Luigi, Mario, Peach and Yoshi all make appearances in the data, as do Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy. Scooby and the Gang, Sonny and Cher and almost the entire cast of Jersey Shore are listed in the dataset, which contains more than 65,000 dogs.
When Vita Garcia’s family took Bebe in off the street a few years ago, the tiny Chinese sharpei mix instantly began to prove her dominance over the family’s other dog, Garcia said. So, they decided to call her what she was: a Bad B- well, this is a family paper. They shortened it to Bebe.
How much is that short-haired Chihuahua in the window?
The most common dog breeds are the kinds you hear about every day. Chihuahuas, labs and German shepherds dominate the list.
These are the most common dog breeds in the county, according to the data:
Together, those 10 breeds make up a little over 40 percent of the registered dogs in the county.
The data lists dog breeds as people register them. So a Shih Tzu mix and a Shih Tzu/Yorkshire terrier mix could be the same kind of dog, but it’s up to the owner to decide how they register their pet. Three dogs are registered in the data as “good dog.”
It’s reasonable to assume that not all dogs living in Riverside County are registered and therefore the data can’t give an accurate picture of the county’s dog population. Though there are multiple animal services offices where you can register your pet, the Riverside County department is the most expansive one and the data here draws only from that department.
Riverside County Department of Animal Services spokesman John Welsh couldn’t estimate how many unregistered dogs might be living in the county.
The Press-Enterprise obtained the data on April 5 via a public records request, so it won’t reflect dogs registered after that date or whose registration has since expired.
State law dictates that dog owners must have their dog licensed, Welsh said.
The fee for registering is $17, he said. It’s $100 if the dog hasn’t been spayed or neutered. The department keeps the money it makes and uses it as part of its budget.
Can you find your dog?
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