[python] How many times a substring occurs

For a simple string with space delimitation, using Dict would be quite fast, please see the code as below

def getStringCount(mnstr:str, sbstr:str='')->int:
    """ Assumes two inputs string giving the string and 
        substring to look for number of occurances 
        Returns the number of occurances of a given string
    """
    x = dict()
    x[sbstr] = 0
    sbstr = sbstr.strip()
    for st in mnstr.split(' '):
        if st not in [sbstr]:
            continue
        try:
            x[st]+=1
        except KeyError:
            x[st] = 1
    return x[sbstr]

s = 'foo bar foo test one two three foo bar'
getStringCount(s,'foo')