Animal Services and Shelters — Brevard County, Florida

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office runs animal services for the whole county, from the Animal Care Center on West Eau Gallie Boulevard in Melbourne to the officers who answer complaints in Palm Bay, Micco and Barefoot Bay.

The Sheriff's Animal Services page says its Animal Services Unit is made up of investigators, Animal Enforcement Officers and the Animal Care Center, and that the unit covers animal complaints for the entire county, keeps the pet licensing records and points owners to rescues and wildlife facilities across Brevard. The Sheriff's Office assumed responsibility for Animal Services on October 1, 2014, according to the Animal Care Center page.

Two administrative offices handle paperwork rather than animals. One sits in the Viera government complex on Judge Fran Jamieson Way, the other at 1515 Sarno Road, Building B, in Melbourne, the same address the Sheriff's Precincts page gives for the South Precinct. The administrative line is 321-633-2105, staffed Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and both offices close on weekends and major holidays. Animal Services is also one of the departments on the Sheriff's online contact form.

Cruelty and neglect reports go to a single number. The Animal Services page asks residents to call 321-633-2024 to report animal abuse, the same line the Animal Care Center uses, because, in the Sheriff's words, not every victim can dial 911. For South Brevard, that means a Malabar resident with a loose dog problem and a Barefoot Bay resident with an injured stray reach the same dispatch.

The county's shelter is the Brevard County Sheriff's Office Animal Care Center at 5100 West Eau Gallie Boulevard in Melbourne, open afternoons every day of the week, with adoptions offered free of charge.

The Animal Care Center page lists the phone as 321-633-2024 and the following public hours.

Adoptions at the Animal Care Center are free for any pet, paid for through business donations to the Sheriff's Pet Posse. In February 2025 the center opened K9 Junny's Animal Medical Center, an on-site clinic where staff veterinarians treat every animal that comes in; the Sheriff's Office says it honors the legacy of Sheriff Wayne Ivey's K9 Junny. Owners who have lost a pet can file a Lost Animal Report online and search the center's stray and found listings, and volunteers can apply to foster.

The shelter publishes its live release rate every month. The Animal Care Center page says the rate had averaged 55% over the five years before the Sheriff's Office took over in 2014, and it now calls Brevard a No-Kill community.

Brevard County Code Chapter 14 requires every owned dog, cat and ferret to carry a current county license tag, renewed every year, and the Sheriff's Office lists a $120 fine for each unlicensed animal.

The Animal Tags and Licenses page explains the purpose plainly: a tag is the pet's ticket home, because an Animal Enforcement Officer who finds a tagged dog in Grant-Valkaria or Port St. John can return it or call the owner. License revenue also pays for transporting injured animals to veterinarians and for investigating neglect cases, the page says. The yearly fees are below.

Tags are sold online by Pet Parent, LLC on behalf of the Sheriff's Office and at participating veterinary offices. In South Brevard the list includes VCA Village Animal Hospital at 1340 Palm Bay Rd. NE in Palm Bay; the others are in Titusville, Port St. John and Rockledge. The county ordinance in Chapter 14, Sec. 14-52 sets the higher price for intact animals on purpose, requiring a differential between fees for intact and sterilized dogs and cats, and it lets any county resident with a working service animal obtain a registration tag at no charge.

A tag depends on a rabies certificate. Sec. 14-52 requires dogs, cats and ferrets four months of age or older to be vaccinated by a licensed veterinarian, with a booster 12 months later, and Florida Statutes 828.30 sets the same 4-month rule statewide. The statute also allows sheriff's staff, under a veterinarian's supervision, to vaccinate animals in custody before adoption or reclaim, a rule that applies to animals leaving the Eau Gallie Boulevard shelter.

Animal complaints anywhere in Brevard, including inside Palm Bay, Melbourne and Malabar, go to the Brevard County Sheriff's Office Animal Services dispatch at (321) 633-2024, with 911 reserved for life-threatening situations.

The Animal Enforcement Unit page lays out a two-step process for ongoing nuisance problems. On a first complaint, Animal Services staff collect the details by phone and send the owner a complaint letter. On a second complaint, an Animal Enforcement Officer tries to speak with the owner and gives the complainant affidavits, such as the Barking Dog, Animal At Large and Bird Noise forms, to be returned to Animal Services Administration at 1515 Sarno Road, Building B, Melbourne.

Urgency decides the order of response at the Animal Care Center dispatch. The Sheriff's Animal Services FAQs define an emergency as an aggressive animal, an animal that has bitten someone, an injured or sick animal with a person standing by, or a high-risk rabies species such as a bat or raccoon inside the living area of a home. Bite investigations and law enforcement assists take priority over routine calls. Reports can be anonymous, but the caller must then give an exact address, and repeat anonymous calls about an issue found unfounded may not get a response.

Some animals are outside the unit's reach. The FAQs send nuisance wildlife questions to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and they ask residents to trap stray cats themselves before officers remove them, since loose cats in yards around Micco or Palm Bay are hard to catch. The page notes that some cities lend traps from city hall and that traps can be rented from retailers.

Reclaiming a pet impounded by Brevard County Sheriff's Office Animal Services and Enforcement costs $35.00 for a first impoundment, plus a $30.00 transport fee and $10.00 per day of boarding, rising with each repeat.

An owner picking up an untagged animal at the Eau Gallie Boulevard shelter must also buy a Brevard County tag at that time, the Animal Enforcement Unit page says. The same page publishes the Chapter 14 citation schedule, which climbs with each offense: an animal at large is $55, then $165, $265 and $415; a dog or cat without an attached tag is $40 and then $65; and failure to vaccinate a dog, cat or ferret is $120, then $215, $315 and $415.

Those citations rest on county ordinance. Brevard County Code Sec. 14-56 makes it a violation for an owner to let an animal be at large, whether willfully or through a failure to restrain it, and Sec. 14-60 keeps animals out of public parks and off beaches unless an area has been designated and posted for them by the Brevard County Commission or a city council. Last verified: October 11, 2026, on the Animal Services pages of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office website.

Brevard County Sheriff's Office FAQs set the everyday limits: pets registered every year, no more than 4 adult dogs per household, leashes no longer than 6 feet, and cats held to the same rules as dogs.

The dog limit is enforced by Code Enforcement rather than by Animal Services, the FAQs note, and puppies under 6 months do not count toward it. For lower-cost sterilization, the same page lists three clinics in Brevard: the Brevard Humane Society, Florida Aid to Animals in Melbourne, and the Brevard Spay-Neuter Clinic in Palm Bay at (321) 724-1141. Spaying or neutering also cuts the yearly tag from $16.00 to $10.00.

The Sheriff's Office pairs shelter dogs with training. The Paws and Stripes College page says the program began in 2006 as basic obedience training for dogs at the Brevard County Animal Shelter, and its Comfort Dog Program now places trained graduates with residents after an eight-hour course held over four days, at no cost to the adopter. A separate 40-hour track prepares therapy dogs for first responder agencies in Brevard.

Volunteers keep the Melbourne shelter running. The Sheriff's Office asks for foster homes for kittens in particular and covers medications for common shelter conditions, according to its foster application, and adopters from Palm Bay, Malabar or Barefoot Bay can browse adoptable pets online before driving to the Eau Gallie Boulevard building.