Tuscaloosa, AL Animal Ordinances: Pet Groomer Rules (2026)

Sec. 25-31 defines 'pet grooming' as a facility where animals are bathed, clipped, or combed for the purpose of enhancing their aesthetic value or health and for which a fee is charged, and it expressly carves out overnight boarding of animals from that definition; a groomer that keeps pets overnight is instead operating a kennel, a separate use type in the same animal care category. Sec. 25-101, the commercial principal use table, places pet grooming in the General Commercial (GC), Neighborhood Commercial (NC), Highway Commercial (HC), Light Industrial (IL), and General Industrial (IG) districts as permitted by right, and in the Downtown Periphery (DP), Local Commercial (LC), and University Commercial (UC) districts only with a special exception use permit from the zoning board of adjustment.

It is also allowed in planned development (PD) districts. 1 of Sec. 25-101, meaning a groomer that fits within the definition faces no locational buffer or building requirement beyond the district permission itself. That stands in contrast to a kennel in the same table, which must keep animal pens inside a fully enclosed building or, if outdoors, set back at least two hundred fifty feet from residential property and be screened by a six-foot opaque fence, and a veterinary clinic, which must provide medical-waste disposal and, in certain districts, keep pens acoustically insulated.

A grooming business that begins boarding animals overnight crosses into the kennel use type and must then meet those tighter kennel standards and secure the zoning approval a kennel requires in its district.