Beloit, WI Animal Ordinances: Pet Store Rules (2026)

155, adopted to stop large-scale commercial breeding facilities that disregard animal welfare for profit, defines a pet store as any retail establishment where companion animals are sold, exchanged, bartered or offered for sale to the public, expressly excluding an animal care facility or animal rescue organization. Subsection (3) then flatly prohibits a pet store from selling, delivering, offering for sale, bartering, auctioning, giving away, or otherwise transferring or disposing of cats, dogs, or rabbits. The only carve-out lets a pet store collaborate with an animal care facility or a 501(c)(3) rescue to showcase adoptable animals on-site, but the store cannot hold any ownership interest in those animals and cannot charge a fee for providing the space.

The section also specifically bars keeping dogs overnight at the store, closing off a workaround where a store might otherwise stage animals as though displaying rescue partners. The definitions distinguish a breeder, who maintains a dog or cat to breed and sell offspring, from a broker, who transfers animals from a breeder for resale, making clear the ordinance is aimed at commercial supply chains rather than individual private sales or breeders selling directly from their own homes, which the pet-store definition does not reach.