If you’ve been thinking about buying a dog, cat, rabbit, potbellied pig or guinea pig at a Las Vegas pet store, you may first want to tune into the next Las Vegas City Council meeting on November 5. That’s when members are set to consider a new ordinance seeking to effectively ban the city’s pet shops from selling those animals in the future. The proposal is the latest in a series of efforts by Valley policymakers to try and curb a growing crisis at local shelters, which are reporting overcrowding. Ahead of the vote, the Weekly spoke with a few Southern Nevada shelters and animal rights advocates to learn more about how the proposed ban and related initiatives could help chip away at the problem.
OVERCROWDING
When a local animal control center captures a stray animal or lost pet, it’ll most likely be brought to the Animal Foundation, which has long operated the largest public animal shelter in Southern Nevada.
In May, the nonprofit reported a 61% increase since 2020 in the number of animals it has taken in annually, calling it a “critical space crisis” that was stretching its capacity to “inhumane levels.”
“Even though there’s usually kind of a natural turn to fewer intakes in the fall and winter than in the summer, this year we’ve seen kind of consistent overcrowding,” CEO Hilarie Grey tells the Weekly.
An employee holds a one-year-old dog named Nyla in the intake room at the Animal Foundation.
As of October 21, nearly 24,000 animals have come through the Animal Foundation’s doors this year, versus just 21,218 through that same point in 2024. Grey and her team of 200 employees are now busier than they have been in at least a decade.
One-third of the nonprofit’s annual budget is funded by an interlocal agreement between Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. Last month, the three approved a new contract granting the Animal Foundation $11.4 million to continue operating through June 2026, with options to renew it for four additional annual periods. To further combat the surge, they also pledged another $1.75 million to “support the transfer, care, and adoption of animals” during high intake periods.
Commissioners also allocated $39 million to design and build a 40,000-square-foot supplemental shelter, plus an additional $3 million for a temporary emergency shelter at the Silver Bowl Park near Sam Boyd Stadium. Those timelines have yet to be announced.
PUPPY MILL CRACKDOWN
Las Vegas’ proposed commercial pet sale ban echoes a similar policy Clark County instituted in 2023, in which commissioners gave shop owners one year to come into compliance. The city previously passed a ban in 2016 but repealed it a year later.
The measure is designed to stifle the proliferation of dogs from puppy mills, or large for-profit breeding facilities that frequently neglect the care of the pets that they often sell to shops. A 2025 report by Humane World for Animals found that “every pet store we visited, and many other puppy stores in Nevada, purchased puppies from known puppy mills.”
In one instance, investigators discovered a sick dog named Cindy Lou in a backroom at Puppy Heaven who died later that night after animal control took her to a veterinary facility. In the most recent Nevada Legislature session, Assembly Bill 487, dubbed “Cindy Lou’s Law,” would have enacted a statewide ban, but was later amended to simply request a study on the issue.
In an October 16 press conference, Mayor Shelley Berkley said the county’s ban led 10 of its pet stores to relocate to the city’s jurisdiction to avoid it. Under her proposal, she said the city’s existing shops would be “grandfathered in” to a three-year period in which they’d be able to “figure out how they can stay open” without those sales.
Berkley expects it to pass. Grey welcomes the proposed ban and adds that in-demand breeds can still be found at animal shelters.
“One of the common arguments against banning puppy mill stores is, what if somebody wants a Yorkie or French Bulldog puppy? But we see every breed, age and size come through the shelter. You just have to come look,” Grey says.
BACKYARD BREEDING
To identify and shut down illegal backyard breeding operations, the City of Las Vegas launched a task force or undercover investigators called Operation Pawsitive Change last year.
Although the city recently reported that the task force had recovered 15 puppies and issued 37 citations between July 1 and October 20, Nevada Voters for Animals President Gina Greisen says these moves are just scratching the surface.
“I want a complete moratorium on all breeding until the impounds go down to a certain percentage,” Greisen says, citing a temporary policy that’s been active in LA since May 2024 that will remain until its shelters stay at or below 75% capacity for three consecutive months.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of care,” she adds. “So, why are we throwing all this money at the shelter when we could be hiring more officers to stop the litters from ever being born?”
Clark County adopted harsher penalties for illegal breeding and increased breeding permit fees in February. To obtain a permit, one must submit proof of vaccinations and microchipping, pass a site inspection, and pay an annual fee of $400 to $800.
SPAY, NEUTER AND CHIP
For Melanie Shayne, founder of Kiss My Paws Rescue and the lost dog search group Doggie Task Force, a lack of public awareness and limited enforcement surrounding Clark County’s 2010 spay and neuter law is a major concern.
“I’m one of these people who tries to focus on the root causes of the problem, like spaying and neutering, but a lot of people who move here don’t know that’s the law,” Shayne says. “Of the surrendered dogs that we take in, probably 90% of them aren’t fixed or vaccinated.”
Another effort to alleviate shelter overcrowding came when the county implemented a new microchip mandate in August. Though its impact remains to be seen, Grey hopes it helps the Animal Foundation find more lost pet owners at a time when only about 23% of animals arrive chipped.
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