Cherokee County, SC Animal Ordinances: Breed Restrictions (2026)

Chapter 4 of the Cherokee County Code, rewritten by Ord. No. 2019-21 on August 19, 2019, regulates dangerous dogs through a behavior definition rather than a breed list. Section 4-2 defines a vicious dog or other animal as any dog or domesticated animal constituting a physical threat to human beings or other animals, evidencing abnormal behavior or inclination to attack persons or animals without provocation, or having a tendency to do any act repeatedly which might endanger the safety of persons or property. The chapter names no breed, and it sets out no separate dangerous dog hearing or registration process. The word unruly, used in the operative section, has no definition of its own in § 4-2.

Section 4-8 is the keeping rule. It is unlawful for any person to keep a vicious or unruly dog unless it is under restraint or other means so that the dog cannot reach persons not on land owned, leased or controlled by the keeper. Under restraint, as § 4-2 defines it, means controlled by a leash, fence or other compliant tethering system, sufficiently near the owner or keeper to be under direct, obedient control, on the owner's property or on property by the owner's permission, or within a vehicle being driven or parked. The keeper's own land is therefore the one place the dog can be loose, and only if it still cannot reach anyone off that land.

Section 4-3(a) directs the animal control officer to apprehend and seize all stray dogs, vicious dogs and dogs running at large and impound them. Section 4-9 covers the worst case: a vicious dog can be summarily destroyed by the animal control officers, or any person the county designates, when the safety of the officers or other persons is immediately endangered and summary destruction is necessary to prevent injury. An animal that is wounded, diseased or in great pain can be destroyed immediately in the officer's judgment. Under § 4-14 the officers also enforce S.C. Code 1976, title 47, chapters 1, 3, 5 and 7, which the chapter incorporates by reference, and can issue a uniform summons for those state-law violations.