Berwyn, IL Animal Ordinances: Pet Store Rules (2026)

Chapter 861 of the Berwyn Code of Ordinances is short, and the rule it sets is a license. Section 861.02 states that no person shall maintain, conduct, operate, manage or carry on the business of a pet shop without first obtaining a license. The chapter as printed holds only a definition, that license requirement and a penalty cross-reference. Nothing in it addresses where animals come from or bans the retail sale of dogs or cats.

The definition in § 861.01(A) is broad. A PET SHOP is any building, room, enclosure, premises or place in the city where birds, dogs or other similar animals used as household pets or otherwise for domestic purposes are sold, offered for sale or given away. It also reaches a place where food, supplies, equipment or other similar articles for animals are manufactured, made, altered, repaired, sold or offered for sale or given away. A supply store that never sells a live animal is therefore inside the definition, and so is a rescue that gives animals away from a storefront.

Section 861.01(B) limits the chapter's reach: it applies only to places or establishments not already especially licensed. A veterinary hospital, which has its own chapter (877), is the cross-referenced example in the chapter's notes, and pet shop operators also fall under the business regulation certificate rules of Chapter 802 and the license fee schedule of Chapter 801.

The chapter cross-references two neighboring rules that affect pet owners in shops: animal noise under § 666.02(D) and tying animals to trees and shrubs under § 1028.11.