“Happiness is a warm puppy,” said the late Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. The flipside — what makes a warm puppy happy — is today being addressed by Fort Worth apartment communities. Many are rolling out an increasingly extensive roster of pet amenities. Not just dog parks but pet washes, agility courses, and even doggy daycare and dog walking are among pet-focused pluses you can find at some local properties these days.
Dog parks, for instance, have gotten lots more common. Carrollton-based multifamily research firm ALN Apartment Data reports that 601 (54%) of 1,123 Tarrant County communities it tracks had dog parks in its most recent study. That’s up from 34% in 2020.
An on-site dog park is likely enough to please most pet-owning renters, according to research from Michelson Found Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal welfare nonprofit.
“The priorities for a typical renter are basically an exercise and relief area and a sufficient number of waste stations on the property,” said Ross Barker, director of Michelson’s pet-inclusive housing program. “Those are not super-sexy amenities, but those are the ones that matter.”
Want sexier? A lot sexier? Michelson recognized Dane Park Grapevine as one of the nation’s most pet-inclusive properties, recipient of its Vanguard Award for 2025, among other recognitions. No surprise that this community— marketing tagline: “Home is where the dog is” — has a list of amenities as long as a Great Dane’s leg.
Dane Park goes well beyond even higher-end pet pluses like grooming stations, agility tracks, and fancy watering stops. At this community, every unit has a doggy door, and ground-floor apartments include fenced private yards.
Photo by Mark Henricks
In-unit cameras let owners monitor pets even when they’re not at home. Text alerts let them know when their dog starts barking. Owners can bark — or whisper — back via intercoms.
Dane Park dwellers can book on-site doggy daycare and grooming and walking services via an app. Community events like group dog walks, movie nights, “yappy” hours, training classes, and fostering events put this community well into the category of pet-focused — if not pet-obsessed.
There’s little data on how many of us are quite that pet-obsessed, but a recent report from online listing platform Apartments.com does measure the percentage of renters searching for pet-inclusive communities. It shows that 60% of people were looking for communities with dogs, 23% for cats, and 17% for both.
The numbers don’t lie, according to Gina Schuler, Apartments.com regional director for Dallas-Fort Worth. “People love pets, and most people have pets.”
So, while near-universal concerns like price and location represent the most common drivers of apartment searchers, pets also fuel renter searches and behavior.
Online search services make it easy to filter for dog parks and broad categories like “dog friendly.” If you want more rarefied pet amenities like a “pet wash,” you can use keywords. That search, by the way, turns up a bare handful of Tarrant County properties on Apartments.com, although there could be more communities that don’t advertise that particular amenity on their websites.
It can be tricky to find a place that will allow your pet to live there at all. ALN’s data shows 1,082 Tarrant County communities (96%) allow pets, a number that shrinks to 937 (83%) if you specify large pets. But Barker of the Michelson nonprofit cautions against assuming that your pet will be accepted because a community says it allows pets. That’s because properties don’t always advertise breed or other restrictions.
“What people need to know is that if a place says it is pet friendly, it might not include their pet,” Barker said. “So, call the office or go there and see for yourself.”
Even if your pet meets the specs, you may not want to sign a lease because landlords tack on additional damage deposits, nonrefundable fees, and add-ons to the monthly rent for pet owners. A bill to cap pet deposits failed to pass the state legislature last session. That means property owners and managers are free to charge whatever the traffic will bear when it comes to pet-based levies.
Also bear in mind that people who want the most for their pets often pay the most for their housing. Dane Park, for example, charges up to $3,832 for a two-bedroom in its doggy dreamland. In a local market where 80% of renters are looking for a place costing less than $2,000 a month, according to Apartments.com, that makes maximum pet-inclusiveness maximally exclusive.
But asking whether your warm puppy’s happiness is worth it is a little like asking if your child, sibling, or parent is worth it, said Barker, who has two dogs and three cats in his own household. “The vast majority of pet owners think of their pets as members of the family. If we think about it that way, that opens up the discussion of what pet-inclusive housing could look like.”
Photo by Mark Henricks
