Pets in Ahmedabad, 2026: a 2019 count of 2.10 lakh street dogs with 89 percent claimed sterilised and a 48-ward census under way to check it, about 5,000 bites a month, a pet licence that rose from Rs 200 to Rs 2,000 in a year, Gujarat's first municipal pet crematorium at Rs 700, and 17 listed clinics with 3 open all night

Pets in Ahmedabad: the city's numbers on one page

Ahmedabad's record is a corporation that publishes claims and a press that publishes tables. Fifteen figures, from fourteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. Ahmedabad says it has sterilised nine dogs in ten, a share no other Indian city claims, and its bite count in the press table rose by 63 percent in a year. The rest of this report is about a corporation that charges its pet owners more than any other and counts its street dogs less often.

How many street dogs Ahmedabad has: 2.10 lakh in 2019, 89 percent sterilised by the corporation's account, and a census begun in 2026 to find out

Ahmedabad's figures all descend from one random census seven years ago. The sterilised share is a claim against that count; the 2026 census is the first chance to test it.

'The last random census of stray dogs in Ahmedabad was conducted in 2019. It recorded around 2.1 lakh animals within city limits', and in January 2026 the corporation estimated the current population at about 1.5 lakh. Other statements put it higher: around 3.75 lakh after the corporation's limits expanded in 2019-20, with only 1.5 lakh sterilised, in October 2023; 'over two lakh' in August 2025; 'approximately 200,000' in the 2026-27 budget. Against the 2019 count the corporation's Cattle Nuisance Control Department claims '89% sterilisation coverage', with 'over 1.88 lakh stray dogs' sterilised 'at a cost of Rs 18.11 crore over seven years', and the mass drive after the 2019 census 'neutered around 1.94 lakh dogs', so that daily procedures fell 'from 150-170 dogs per day to 30-35'.

The 2026 census: 48 wards, nine months, an app

The census began in 2026, 'starting with the Paldi ward and gradually covering all 48 wards' over nine months, by 'trained teams, each comprising three volunteers' using 'a dedicated mobile application for real-time data collection', in response to a Supreme Court directive of 11 August 2025 All India Radio News (newsonair.gov.in); tenders had closed on 13 February 2026. The same May 2026 report gives the corporation's own frame for it: an estimated 2.10 lakh dogs of which 'around 1.90 lakh' are sterilised, '6-8 shelters with a combined capacity of 8,000-10,000 dogs', and 'at least 10-12 additional shelters' needed. Since January 2025 the corporation has also been implanting RFID chips in street dogs, 6,007 by January 2026, and bought 15,000 microchips for about Rs 50.53 lakh in 2026 with 5,390 dogs tagged by June. Bonbeno's street dog report sets the claim beside the cities that have measured theirs: Mumbai found 62.9 percent sterilised, Bengaluru 72 percent, Chennai 27 percent, and the Gujarat census counted 9,31,170 stray dogs in 2019, 10.1 percent more than in 2012.

Dog bites and rabies: about 5,000 bites a month, a press table that says 99,018 in 2025, and a corporation that says no one died

Ahmedabad's bite count is high and its rabies count is zero. The report prints the table it has and the vaccine figures that stand in for a register.

Ahmedabad records 'nearly 5,000 cases every month, about 180 daily', which is about 180 people bitten a day, and in August 2025 'nearly 5,000 bite cases per month, pushing the total to over 20,000 in just four months'. Gujarat Samachar's World Rabies Day table gives the city 69,790 dog bites in 2023, 60,663 in 2024 and 99,018 in 2025, with cat bites at 1,628, 2,286 and 4,900 and monkey bites at none, 366 and 593, while its text says 77,019 'in a year', a 29 percent rise; the report prints both. The corporation's own proxy is the vaccine: anti-rabies doses 'given at 35 AMC health facilities have risen from 5,000-5,500 per month three years ago to 7,000-7,500 now', about 20 to 25 percent of them to people from outside the city's limits. The state's table is in Bonbeno's dog bite report: Gujarat recorded 3,92,837 dog bites in 2024 in the IDSP table, 542.8 per lakh of population, the second-highest rate in India after Tamil Nadu's, with 3 suspected rabies deaths in 2023 and 1 in 2024.

Rabies: zero in 2025 by the corporation's count, and the two deaths that were news

The corporation's health official said 'no rabies deaths occurred in Ahmedabad in 2025'; the last recorded case was in 2024, a man from Ranip. Two deaths made the news anyway. In October 2023 Parag Desai, 50, a director of the Wagh Bakri tea company, died after a stray dog attack near his Bopal home, after which the corporation identified about 200 dogs on the Bopal to Ghuma stretch, caught 40 for sterilisation and floated a Rs 8 crore tender to bring in more NGOs; and in September 2025 a city police inspector died of suspected rabies after a scratch from his own vaccinated pet dog, with samples sent to the National Institute of Virology at Pune. Gujarat Samachar's article cites the ICMR's National Institute of Epidemiology estimate of around 5,726 rabies deaths a year in India against 54 in the central count for 2024, which is the gap the city's zero sits inside.

The Animal Birth Control programme: Rs 976.50 a dog, four NGOs, 25,993 surgeries in ten months of 2023, and a Rs 3 crore shelter line in a Rs 18,518 crore budget

Ahmedabad pays its sterilisation agencies the lowest rate of the eight cities and claims the highest coverage. The monthly figures show a programme running far below the capacity it once had.

The corporation 'provides a payment of Rs 976.50 for each dog sterilised' to its contracted agencies, four NGOs in 2023, People For Animals, the Gol Foundation, the Yash Domestic Research Centre and the Sanskar Education Trust, and had '98,333 dogs sterilised from 2020 to 2023 at a total cost of Rs 9.11 crore' with '25,993 dogs' in the first ten months of 2023 for Rs 2.53 crore. Its spending ran Rs 2.30 crore in 2020-21, Rs 2.56 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 4.5 crore in 2022-23, more than Rs 9.36 crore over three years; Gujarat Samachar puts it at 'around Rs 10 crore on sterilisation of 1.35 lakh dogs over the past five years', and the corporation itself at 1.88 lakh dogs for Rs 18.11 crore over seven. Mumbai, by comparison, pays Rs 1,543 to Rs 1,750 a dog under its 2026 plan, as Bonbeno's Mumbai report records.

The monthly figures are where the 89 percent meets the street. In April to July 2025 the corporation received 3,891 complaints about stray dog attacks and sterilised 2,412 dogs, 549, 572, 537 and 580 a month against 727, 911, 573 and 1,395 complaints, with July the worst month; the department head's own account is that the post-2019 drive took the daily rate from 150 to 170 surgeries to 30 to 35, because the dogs left are the hard ones to catch. The 2026-27 budget, Rs 18,518 crore in all, allocates 'Rs 3 crore for the construction of dog shelters' for violent and sick dogs, against the 10 to 12 shelters the corporation says it needs beyond the 6 to 8 it has. A sterilised and vaccinated dog caught outside an institutional area is returned where it was caught under rule 11(19) of the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023; the Supreme Court's 11 August 2025 order, which the census cites, is the one that first required shelters.

Veterinary care: a state with more than half its government vet posts empty, and 17 private clinics of which 3 never close

Gujarat has the worst-staffed government veterinary system in India by vacancy, and Ahmedabad's private layer is the shortest list Bonbeno keeps.

Gujarat had 4,743 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024 and 1,652 sanctioned government doctor posts with 923 vacant, 55.9 percent, the highest vacancy share of any state. Its 2,064 government institutions are 34 veterinary hospitals and polyclinics, 891 dispensaries and 1,139 aid centres, and its 127 mobile veterinary units cover 0.5 per lakh livestock against the central norm of one. Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks the state on 5,670 livestock per registered vet; in the city the Government Veterinary Hospital at Premdarwaja in the old city is the state facility in the directory.

The private layer: 17 clinics, 3 of them 24-hour clinics

Bonbeno's vet directory for Ahmedabad, each entry checked against its Google listing on 16 October 2026 for an address, a live phone number and the hours the clinic itself publishes, lists 17 clinics and hospitals, 3 of which publish round-the-clock opening: Caring Paws Veterinary Clinic and its home-visit service at Ambawadi, and Happy Tails Pets and Exotics Clinic, also in Ambawadi. Thirteen of the 17 are rated 4.5 or higher and 3,059 Google reviews sit behind an average of 4.65, the highest of the eight cities in the directory, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad; 8 have a website. The list is the shortest of the eight because the pull was: 'only forty records came back, the smallest return of any city', and 23 were dropped, among them a human multispeciality hospital, a nuclear medicine department, a PET-CT scan unit and four charities whose own descriptions say their animal work is for strays, including the 3,078-review Jivdaya Charitable Trust.

The Google Maps pulls were short too. The 'pet grooming' search of 2 November 2026 returned 38 listings, 11 of them pet groomers and 18 pet stores, and the 'pet boarding' search 17, with 8 boarding, day-care, cattery or sitter listings, 7 of them claiming 24-hour opening. What a consultation, a vaccination or a surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Shops, groomers and boarders: 155 Google Maps listings, 36 shop names that sell animals, and five hardware stores

Ahmedabad's pet retail sells live animals more openly than any city in this series, and Google's own category field catches the least of it.

Of the first 100 Google Maps results for 'pet shop' in Ahmedabad, 61 are pet stores or pet supply stores, 23 are aquarium, bird or reptile shops, 6 are clinics, groomers or boarders and 10 are not pet businesses at all, five of them hardware stores; 84 are rated, the median listing has 24 reviews, 61.9 percent score 4.5 or higher, 27 percent have a website, 5 are marked temporarily closed, 9 claim 24-hour opening and 36 names advertise live animals, puppies, birds or fish, the most of any city. JUSTDOGS appears four times and Heads Up For Tails three. The grooming pull found 11 pet groomers in 38 results, a median of 41 reviews and 71.1 percent at 4.5 or higher, with JUSTDOGS four times and Heads Up For Tails three; the boarding pull 8 boarding, day-care, cattery or sitter listings in 17, 64.7 percent at 4.5 or higher, and JUSTDOGS three times. Bonbeno's dog grooming cost guide and boarding versus a pet sitter cover the prices and the choice.

Registered pet shops: a state with no published register

Every shop that sells an animal needs a certificate from the State Animal Welfare Board under the Pet Shop Rules, 2018, and the Animal Welfare Board of India wrote to every state in December 2023 that only Maharashtra had reported on implementing them. No Gujarat register and no count of registered shops in Ahmedabad could be found for this report, in a city where 36 of 100 shop names advertise the animals they sell. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause and the one state register that exists.

The pet licence: mandatory since January 2025, Rs 200 then Rs 500 then Rs 1,000 then Rs 2,000, half the city's pet dogs unregistered, and cats next

Ahmedabad's licence is the steepest in the country and the youngest. The fee rose tenfold inside its first year.

The corporation made pet dog registration mandatory from 1 January 2025, to be completed within 90 days, for 'a registration fee of Rs. 200 per pet dog', on its own online portal, with an Aadhaar or election card, the applicant's tax bill and electricity bill, and photographs of the applicant, the dog and the place where the dog is kept, under the Rabies-Free Ahmedabad City initiative and the national 2030 rabies elimination plan; the 90 days were the only timeline the notice gave, and renewal has run on an annual window since. Then the fee climbed: 'went up to INR 500 in June', 'was further raised to INR 1,000 between August and September', and 'from October 1, pet dog owners in the city will have to pay INR 2,000 per year for registration', with notices and house-to-house inspections promised for owners who do not. The 2026 window ran from 1 July to 30 September at Rs 2,000, and from 9 July 2026 pet cats had to be registered too, by 30 September, for Rs 200.

The uptake is the corporation's own estimate: 'Ahmedabad has nearly 50,000 pet dogs, but less than half of them is currently registered'. At Rs 2,000 the licence costs forty times Chennai's Rs 50 and Pune's, four times Delhi's Rs 500, and infinitely more than Hyderabad's free one; of the eight cities only Chennai, with a Rs 5,000 fine, publishes a higher count of licences than Ahmedabad's estimate of under 25,000. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India walks the corporation's portal beside every other city's, and the metro guide covers what the Ahmedabad Metro allows. Housing societies work under the Animal Welfare Board of India's guideline, which Bonbeno's guide to pets in apartments in India reads beside Mumbai's municipal version.

When a pet dies: Gujarat's first municipal pet crematorium, on CNG at Behrampura, about Rs 700 a dog, and 600 cremations in nine months

Ahmedabad opened its crematorium in February 2026 and found a demand of five to seven a day. Two more are planned.

The corporation's CNG pet crematorium at the CNCD Animal Birth Control centre in Behrampura, the first in Gujarat, has run since 9 February 2026: 'set up at a cost of Rs 30 lakh', able to 'cremate up to three dogs at a time' in a chamber of about four feet by three by three at 800 to 900 degrees, at 'about Rs 700 per dog', booked by reporting the death on the corporation's 155303 helpline with the pet's registration details, with online registration or a service donation for an unregistered pet. By October 2026 '600 dogs and cats have been cremated with traditional last rites in Ahmedabad over the past nine months', 547 of them pets and 53 strays, with requests on some days for five to seven, and the department has planned two more crematoria 'at a cost of around Rs 60 lakh', one at Vastral and one in the west near the Ring Road.

Of the eight cities, Ahmedabad's is the cheapest municipal cremation that is not free: Chennai's and Mumbai's Malad cost nothing, Delhi's Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000, as Bonbeno's city reports record. The steps, the paperwork and the private options are in Bonbeno's guide to what to do when your pet dies in India.

What an Ahmedabad pet owner can do with these numbers

Seven things that follow from the record, in the order a new owner meets them.

1. Register the dog, and the cat, on the corporation's portal. Both are mandatory; the dog costs Rs 2,000 a year and the cat Rs 200, and the registration is what books a cremation slot.
2. Pick the 24-hour clinic before you need it. Three of the 17 listed clinics publish round-the-clock opening, all in Ambawadi; the Ahmedabad vet directory marks them. Phone before you drive.
3. Vaccinate against rabies on schedule and treat every bite and scratch as urgent. The city records about 5,000 bites a month, and its one suspected rabies death of 2025 followed a scratch from a vaccinated pet DeshGujarat, 'Ahmedabad Police Inspector….
4. Report an unsterilised dog with its location. The corporation pays Rs 976.50 a surgery and says the dogs left are the hard ones to catch Vibes of India, 'Citywide Stray Dog Survey….
5. Expect the census team. Three volunteers with an app, ward by ward, from Paldi, for nine months from mid-2026.
6. Buy animals only from a shop that can show its Board certificate, and expect few can. Thirty-six of a hundred shop names advertise live animals and no register exists; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Know the crematorium. Behrampura, about Rs 700, through the 155303 helpline.

What this data does not measure

Each figure here was produced for a different purpose by a different office, and the limits travel with them.

• The 89 percent is a claim against a 2019 count, and the count was random. No method has been published for 2019, the estimates since run from 1.5 to 3.75 lakh, and the 2026 census is the first measurement; its results are not due until it finishes.
• The bite table is a newspaper's, and it contradicts the article it sits in. 77,019 and 99,018 cannot both be 2025; the report prints both and uses the corporation's 'about 5,000 a month' as the working figure.
• The spending and output figures come from five statements covering overlapping periods, three, five and seven years, and none reconciles to another; the per-dog rate is the one figure every source agrees on.
• The rabies count is the corporation's. It records no death in 2025, the press records a suspected one, and the national estimate for India is a hundred times the official count.
• The licence uptake is an estimate against an estimate, nearly 50,000 pet dogs and under half registered, from October 2025; nothing newer has been published, and no penalty amount has been.
• The crematorium's charge is 'about Rs 700' in the report of its opening; no tariff card has been published.
• The directory is a window, not a census. Ahmedabad's 17 listings come from a 40-record pull with 23 dropped; the Google Maps pulls returned 38 and 17 results for grooming and boarding against 100 requested, are classified by Google's category field, and a 24-hour claim is unverified.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the Google Maps layer was produced by scripts kept with the report.

1. The population, census and sterilisation figures are from IANS's report of 2 June 2026 as carried by New Kerala, DeshGujarat's of 2 May 2026, Vibes of India's of 24 January 2026, Bilkul Online's of 26 October 2023, OMMCOM News's of 8 August 2025 and All Gujarat News's report of the 2026-27 budget; the state census from the Rajya Sabha reply used in Bonbeno's street dog report.
2. The bite and rabies figures are from Gujarat Samachar's report of 28 September 2026, DeshGujarat's of 2 May 2026 and 22 September 2025 DeshGujarat, 'Ahmedabad Police Inspector…, Vibes of India's of 24 January 2026 and OMMCOM's of 8 August 2025; the state series from Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025 as published by the Press Information Bureau. The Supreme Court's order from All India Radio's report of 11 August 2025 and rule 11(19) from the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 as gazetted.
3. The registration rules and fees are from DeshGujarat's report of 12 December 2024, CarryMyPet's of 6 October 2025 and Gujarat Samachar's of 9 July 2026. The crematorium is from DeshGujarat's report of 9 February 2026 and Gujarat Samachar's of 8 October 2026. The pet shop record is the Animal Welfare Board of India's circular of 28 December 2023. The state veterinary figures are the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha replies used in the Vet Access Index Open Government Data Platform India Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287.
4. The private clinic figures are counts over Bonbeno's Ahmedabad directory file as checked on 16 October 2026. The Google Maps layer is three Apify runs of the Google Maps Scraper, 'pet shop' on 1 November 2026 and 'pet grooming' and 'pet boarding' on 2 November 2026, 100 results requested each, classified by Google's primary category by the summary scripts in the research folder.