Pueblo County, CO has 1.4× fewer pet-care businesses per resident than the national average.
Pueblo County, CO has 7 with employees and 50 without — 57 pet care services (excluding veterinary) in total, 3.4 per 10,000 residents against a national rate of 4.7. That's 1.4× fewer than average (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
- In Pueblo County
- 7
- Per 10k residents
- 3.4
- National rate
- 4.7
- Ratio
- 1.4× fewer than average
Population 169,723. Ranked 1 of 27 Colorado counties with enough pet care data to compare — 1 = fewest per resident.
Sources: US Census County Business Patterns ↗ (businesses with employees) and Nonemployer Statistics ↗ (sole proprietors). Every figure here is the two added together.
Pueblo County, CO has 12 fewer pet care services (excluding veterinary) than in 2017 — 69 then, 57 now, down 17%. Nationally the count grew 53% over the same years.
Pueblo County moved against the national direction over these years. That is the part worth asking about locally — the data says it happened, not why.
What this doesn't tell you: Census counts how many exist each year, not how many opened or closed. A drop of 12 could be 12 closures — or 20 closures and 8 openings. A year Census suppressed for this county is left out rather than counted as zero.
Series runs 2017–2023. 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: This code cannot tell a dog walker from a grooming salon or a boarding kennel — they are one industry to Census. The solo operators are counted (they are most of the number), but a county that looks well served might be full of premises businesses a walker does not really compete with, or full of walkers and short of kennels. The count cannot say which.
What this doesn't tell you: A low count can mean an opening — or that there's less local demand for it. This counts how many businesses exist, including sole proprietors, but not how many customers want one. Treat it as a lead to check, not a verdict.
County Business Patterns counts only establishments with paid employees, which is why this page adds Nonemployer Statistics — the sole operators with no payroll, who are the majority in most of these trades. Both are counted above, and both are on census.gov if you want to check them.
Fewer of these per resident than the country average is a reason to look, not a reason to start. The two explanations the data cannot separate are “nobody has served this yet” and “there is less to serve here” — a county with few pool services may simply have few pools. The next step is not a business plan, it is ten phone calls to people in Pueblo County who would pay for it.
Census counts these as one industry, so the 7 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
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