Iron County, UT Animal Ordinances: Dog Leash Laws (2026)

Chapter 6.08, Dogs, contains a single operative section for the unincorporated county. Section 6.08.010 makes it unlawful for any person to permit a dog they own or that is in their care or possession to run at large unless the dog is attended by a responsible person, and the rule applies within Iron County's limits but outside any incorporated town or city, so it reaches the Escalante Desert flats, the county roads around the I-15 corridor and the rural land outside Cedar City, Parowan, Enoch, Brian Head, Kanarraville and Paragonah, each of which enforces its own separate leash rule inside its own limits.

The Iron County Sheriff's Office, which handles animal control for the county, is authorized to destroy any dog found running at large in violation of the section, not merely impound it, and the section imposes that consequence in addition to, not instead of, the misdemeanor charge against the owner or possessor. The misdemeanor penalty is set directly in the section rather than by cross-reference to the county's general penalty chapter: a fine of up to two hundred ninety-nine dollars and a jail sentence of up to six months, or both.

The section traces to Ordinance 54 of 1976, itself amending Ordinance 11 of 1934, one of the oldest surviving provisions in the Iron County Code.