Dunwoody, GA Animal Ordinances: Pet Store Rules (2026)

Adopted by Ordinance No. 2025-05-02, Section 6-34 flatly forbids a pet shop from selling, delivering, offering for sale, bartering, auctioning, or otherwise disposing of dogs or cats for a fee. The only path a Dunwoody pet shop has to place a dog or cat with a new owner is adoption, and even that is restricted: the animal must have come from, or be displayed in cooperation with, either an "animal care facility" (a government-run or contracted shelter whose mission is rescue and placement) or an "animal rescue organization" (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit doing the same). A shop cannot offer any dog or cat for adoption before it is eight weeks old.

The ordinance layers recordkeeping onto the sale ban. A pet shop must keep documentation of where each dog or cat came from for at least a year and produce it on demand to the city manager, police chief, community development director, or their designee, and it must post a sign on each animal's cage naming the specific shelter or rescue it came from.

Penalties are counted animal by animal and day by day: each dog or cat sold, exchanged, bartered, offered for sale, auctioned, delivered, or transferred in violation is a separate offense worth up to $500.00, each missing cage sign is its own separate offense, and each day the violation continues is likewise a separate offense. The city manager, police chief, community development director, or a designee enforces the section through municipal court citations.