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

The definition in subsection B is physical, not behavioral. Off the owner's or handler's property, compliance requires a leash or tether actually connecting the dog to a person: affixed to the dog at one end and to the owner or handler at the other. A dog that responds to voice commands but is not attached to anyone meets the ordinance's definition of running at large the moment it leaves its owner's property, unless it is inside a designated off-leash area. That designated-area exception is the only one the definition states.

040, so those areas are off the table entirely. Enforcement under subsection C runs on two tracks. A person who allows an animal to run at large is subject to either a civil notice of violation or a Class B misdemeanor citation. The section also states that each violation is a separate offense, so a dog found at large on different occasions exposes its owner to a separate charge each time. The current language was adopted through Ordinance 1877 in 2021.