Dog Breed Restrictions and Arkansas Home Insurance
Why the same dog gets declined at one company and written at another, what Arkansas law actually says about bite liability, and the county ordinance most of Northwest Arkansas is living under without knowing it.
Short Answer
Arkansas has no statewide dog-bite statute and no law stopping cities from regulating by breed. Your homeowners liability section is what responds to a bite, unless your policy excludes the dog. Which breeds get restricted is a company-by-company underwriting question rather than a legal one, and the answers differ enough that where you apply matters.
Almost everything written about this question is a list of breeds that some company somewhere will not write. The lists are not wrong exactly, but they answer a question nobody actually has. What a dog owner wants to know is narrower and more practical: will my policy pay if my dog bites someone, and what happens if the company finds out what I own.
Two things determine that. One is your policy, which is a private contract and differs between companies. The other is Arkansas law, which is stranger than most people expect and changes depending on which side of a county line you are standing on.
Arkansas Has No Dog-Bite Statute at All
Most states have a law that says, in some form, that a dog owner is liable when the dog bites someone. Arkansas is one of a small number that does not. There is no civil dog-bite statute on the books.
What fills the gap is older and less tidy. A bite claim in Arkansas generally proceeds either as ordinary negligence, or under the doctrine of scienter, which is the formal name for what most people call the one-bite rule. Under scienter the central question is not whether the dog bit someone. It is whether the owner already knew the dog was inclined to. Prior aggression, prior lunging, a prior bite: any of it can establish the knowledge, and an actual first bite is not required despite the nickname.
There is also a criminal provision. Ark. Code § 5-62-125 makes it an offense to negligently allow a dog you know has a disposition to attack to cause serious physical injury or death, as a Class A misdemeanor. It is narrow, it does not reach ordinary bites, and it is a criminal matter rather than the mechanism by which an injured person is made whole. It is worth knowing it exists and worth not mistaking it for a liability statute.
Benton County does not follow the one-bite rule, and almost nobody living there knows it
Benton County Code of Ordinances § 10-2 makes the owner of an animal liable for property damage and injuries the animal inflicts while off the owner’s property, whether or not the animal has ever been declared dangerous or vicious. No prior knowledge required, no prior bite required. The same ordinance provides for double damages where the injured party is a handicapped person or an animal trained to assist one.
That off-property qualifier does real work and it is the part that gets dropped everywhere else this ordinance is described. The ordinance is not a general strict-liability rule for anything that happens on your own lot. It attaches once the animal is off your property, which is exactly the loose-dog situation, and in that situation the ordinary Arkansas defense of “he had never done anything like this before” simply is not available. This is general information rather than legal advice, and Washington County and the individual cities each set their own rules on top of it.
Breed Restrictions Are Underwriting, Not Law
Nothing in Arkansas law tells an insurance company which dogs to accept. Companies decide that for themselves, in filings and internal guidelines, and they land in genuinely different places. Some maintain a list of breeds they will not write. Some have no breed list and look at the individual animal and whether it has a bite history. Some will write the home and exclude the dog. Some will write both with an endorsement that limits what is payable on an animal claim.
This is why the national lists are so unsatisfying to read. There is no single list. There is a market of companies with different appetites, which is the whole reason it is worth having more than one to ask.
It is also why this page does not name any company or reproduce anybody’s breed list. Appetite changes, it changes without announcement, and a list published on a blog in August is a liability to the reader who finds it in March. The current answer for a specific breed at a specific company is a live question, and there is a better way to ask it than reading an article.
What Your Policy Actually Does When a Dog Bites Someone
Three parts of a homeowners or renters policy can come into play, and they behave differently.
| Policy part | What it does | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Personal liability | Responds when you are legally responsible for injury to someone else, and generally pays defense costs as well as damages | An animal liability exclusion, a named-breed exclusion, or an endorsement capping animal claims |
| Medical payments to others | Pays medical costs for an injured guest without a finding of fault, up to a small limit | Whether animal injuries are carved out of it |
| Personal umbrella | Sits above the homeowners liability section once that section is exhausted | Whether the umbrella carries its own animal exclusion, which it can even when the homeowners policy does not |
The trap worth naming is the third row. An umbrella is often bought precisely because of a dog, and umbrellas carry their own exclusions that do not automatically match the policy underneath. It is possible to hold both and find the exclusion sitting in the one you were counting on. That is a five-minute check against the forms.
An exclusion is not the same as a decline
These get conflated constantly and they are not the same event. A decline means the company will not write the house. An animal liability exclusion means the company writes the house and the dog is outside the liability coverage. The second one is a real option that people knowingly take, and it is very different from the first, which is worth being clear about before deciding a company said no.
The Livestock Statute Nobody Mentions
There is one place where Arkansas does impose liability by statute, and it has nothing to do with people. Ark. Code § 20-19-102 makes a person owning, possessing or controlling a dog liable to the owner of a domesticated animal that the dog kills or injures, for the full value of that animal. The statute names sheep, goats, cattle, swine and poultry among the animals covered, and the list is not exhaustive.
Read that against the one-bite rule and the contrast is sharp. If your dog gets out and bites a person, an injured party outside Benton County generally has to establish that you knew the dog was dangerous. If the same dog gets out and kills a neighbor’s chickens, the statute attaches to the full value of the birds without any of that. In a region with as many small acreages, hobby flocks and backyard goats as this one, that is not a hypothetical, and it is a liability claim in the ordinary course. This is general information rather than legal advice.
If Your Dog Is on Somebody’s Restricted List
- Find out what your current policy actually says before anything else. Look for an animal or canine liability exclusion on the declarations page and in the endorsement list. Many people carrying an exclusion have no idea, because it was added at a renewal.
- Do not assume a decline is the market’s answer. One company’s guidelines are one company’s guidelines. Appetite for the same breed varies widely, and an independent agency asking several is a different exercise from applying to one.
- Gather what makes the individual dog look like the individual dog. Training certificates, a clean history, spay or neuter records, fencing and containment. Companies that underwrite the animal rather than the label will consider it, and it costs nothing to have ready.
- Ask about canine liability coverage as a separate purchase. Where a homeowners policy will not include the dog, standalone coverage sometimes can, and it is a route most people never learn exists.
- Answer the question honestly on the application. A dog omitted from an application is a problem that surfaces at claim time, which is the worst possible moment to discover the file does not match the household.
- Check your own city, not just the county. Arkansas cities set their own animal ordinances and they are not consistent with each other. Your city clerk or animal control office is the authoritative answer, and a phone call settles it.
Why we are not publishing a city-by-city table
Arkansas has no state law preventing cities from regulating dogs by breed, and a bill that would have preempted local breed ordinances failed in the 2023 session, so the authority stays local. That means ordinances differ between Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville, Bella Vista and Centerton, and they change. The trackers that publish Arkansas municipal breed lists are candid that they cannot verify their own entries, and we are not willing to tell you your city bans a breed on that basis. Call your city clerk or animal control office. It is the only source that is current by definition.
Ask Cribby which companies write your breed
This is the question an article cannot answer well, because the answer changes. Cribby works from the current appetite information across our carrier market, so ask it directly:
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a home insurance company refuse to cover my dog’s breed in Arkansas?
Yes. Arkansas does not require any insurer to accept a particular breed, and each company sets its own acceptability rules. Those rules are not uniform. A breed that stops an application at one company will pass at another, and some companies look at the individual dog and its history rather than at the breed name. Because the answer varies by company rather than by law, this is a shopping question.
Does Arkansas have a dog-bite law that makes me automatically liable?
Not at the state level. Arkansas has no civil dog-bite statute, so most claims run through common-law negligence or the scienter doctrine, often called the one-bite rule, under which the owner’s prior knowledge of the dog’s dangerous tendencies is the central question. Local ordinances can change that answer substantially, and in Benton County they do. This is general information rather than legal advice.
What is different about Benton County?
Benton County Code of Ordinances section 10-2 makes the owner of an animal liable for property damage and injuries the animal inflicts while off the owner’s property, whether or not the animal has been declared dangerous or vicious. The ordinance also provides for double damages where the injured party is a handicapped person or an animal trained to assist one. That is a different standard from the one-bite rule that applies by default elsewhere in the state.
Does my homeowners policy cover a dog bite?
The personal liability section of a homeowners or renters policy is generally what responds to a bite claim, and medical payments coverage may apply separately. Whether it responds in your case depends on whether the policy carries an animal liability exclusion, a breed exclusion, or an endorsement capping what is payable for animal claims. Those terms differ between companies and between policy forms, so the answer is in your own declarations and forms rather than in a general rule.
What happens if my dog kills a neighbor’s chickens or goats?
Arkansas Code section 20-19-102 makes a person owning or controlling a dog liable to the owner of a domesticated animal killed or injured by that dog for the full value of that animal, and it names sheep, goats, cattle, swine and poultry among them. That liability is statutory and does not run through the one-bite analysis, which makes it worth knowing in a region with as many small acreages as this one.
My dog is on a restricted list. Can I still get covered?
Frequently, yes, though it can take more work than a standard placement. The routes are a company that underwrites the individual dog rather than the breed, a policy written with an animal liability exclusion where that trade-off is acceptable to you, or separate canine liability coverage bought alongside the homeowners policy. Which of those is open depends on the dog, its history and the market at that moment, which is why it is worth asking rather than assuming.
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Disclaimer: This article is general information and is not insurance, legal, tax or financial advice, and it is not a substitute for the terms of your own agreements or policies. Statutory and ordinance references, including Ark. Code § 5-62-125, Ark. Code § 20-19-102 and Benton County Code of Ordinances § 10-2, are provided as general information about publicly available law and are not legal advice or an opinion about any particular situation. Municipal ordinances differ between cities and change, and your city clerk or animal control office is the authoritative source for the rules that apply where you live. Whether any breed is acceptable, and on what terms, is set by each insurance company and is subject to underwriting and carrier eligibility. Coverage is set by the insurance company and is subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions of the policy actually issued to you, which controls in every case. Cribb Insurance Group Inc is an independent insurance agency licensed in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas. Reviewed 2026-08-15; insurance law, ordinances and carrier filings change, and this article may not describe the current position after that date. Cribb Insurance Group Inc, 1601 SW Regional Airport Blvd, Bentonville, AR 72713 · (479) 286-1066 · service@cribbinsurance.com.