Middletown, OH Animal Ordinances: Mandatory Spay/Neuter (2026)

Section 618.23 governs how dogs may be confined outdoors in the City of Middletown, Ohio. Division (a) treats a dog as under its owner's reasonable control if it is enclosed or tethered on the owner's property, subject to the stricter dangerous-dog rules in § 618.17. Division (b) then bans direct point chaining, tying a dog straight to a fixed stake or post, outright. The only tethering method the code allows is a trolley or pulley system running on a cable, and only if all nine listed conditions are met.

Those conditions require a single dog per cable run, a properly fitted collar or harness with room for two adult fingers between it and the dog's throat (choke, prong, and pinch collars are banned for this purpose), swivels on both ends of the tether, a tether weighing no more than one-eighth of the dog's body weight, a tether and cable each at least 15 feet long with the cable mounted no more than 7 feet above the ground, placement far enough from fences and obstacles to prevent tangling or strangulation, continuous access to water and shelter, and a cap of 12 consecutive hours tethered in any 24-hour period. The spay-or-neuter requirement sits inside that list as condition (8): the dog must be spayed or neutered. It applies specifically to a dog restrained on a cable-run tether, not to dog ownership generally; Middletown has no separate citywide mandatory spay-or-neuter ordinance for pets kept in a yard, fenced enclosure, or on a hand-held leash.

Division (c) separately requires any penned or fenced enclosure to give a dog at least 150 square feet of exercise space per dog and a cover, if any, at least two feet above the dog's standing height. Division (e) makes a violation of either the tethering rules in (b) or the enclosure rules in (c) a third-degree misdemeanor.