Hughes County, SD has 1.3× more pet-care businesses per resident than the national average.
Hughes County, SD already has 3 with employees and 8 without — 11 pet care services (excluding veterinary) in total, 6.2 per 10,000 residents against 4.7 nationally. That's 1.3× more than average, so this category is well covered here (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
- In Hughes County
- 3
- Per 10k residents
- 6.2
- National rate
- 4.7
- Ratio
- 1.3× more than average
Population 17,617. Ranked 9 of 9 South Dakota counties with enough pet care data to compare — 1 = fewest per resident.
Source: US Census County Business Patterns ↗Hughes County, SD had 4 pet care services (excluding veterinary) with employees in 2019 and 3 in 2023 — little changed. Nationally the count grew 28% over the same years.
What this doesn't tell you: Census counts how many exist each year, not how many opened or closed. A count that barely moves can still hide plenty of churn underneath it. It also can't see solo operators without employees, in any year.
Series runs 2019–2023. Earlier vintages exist but are not comparable: Census changed which small counties it publishes after 2016, so including them would show counties losing an industry that never left.
Census code 812910 covers non-veterinary pet services: boarding kennels, grooming, daycare, training and pet sitting.
The blind spot: Dog walking is overwhelmingly done by solo operators with no employees, and this count cannot see any of them. What it mostly counts is grooming salons and boarding facilities — premises businesses that a walker does not really compete with.
County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees. A solo operator with no payroll — the most likely competitor for most of these businesses — is invisible to it, in every county, including this one.
There are more of these per resident here than in the country at large. That is a genuine argument against starting one in Hughes County without something specific that the 3already operating do not have. It is not fatal — a crowded category can still have a bad-service niche — but “there is room” is not the argument available to you here, and any tool that tells you otherwise is guessing.
Census counts these as one industry, so the 3 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
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