Breaking the Bond: Public Attitudes Toward Dog Tethering and Its Criminalization

Dog tethering persists as a common management practice despite growing evidence of its negative welfare implications and increasing legislative recognition of animal sentience. Yet public support for its criminalization remains understudied. This study assessed public attitudes towards the criminalization of permanent dog tethering in Portugal and identified independent predictors of pro-criminalization attitudes. An anonymous cross-sectional online survey was administered to a sample of Portuguese adults. Of 471 respondents, 41.2% endorsed unconditional criminalization, 48.0% endorsed conditional criminalization, and 10.8% opposed it, with 9 in 10 respondents endorsing some form of legal prohibition. Anger upon witnessing a tethered dog was the dominant independent predictor of pro-criminalization attitude (OR = 81.06, 95% CI 6.56–1001.48) and of unconditional criminalization specifically. Affirming canine sentience independently predicted unconditional criminalization. The association between sex and pro-criminalization attitude was attenuated and became non-significant after controlling for emotional responses, consistent with, though not establishing, a relationship between sex and emotional reactivity. Although 81.7% of respondents considered tethering to constitute animal mistreatment, only 21.0% of the total sample had previously reported or intervened, though this figure rose to 48.1% among the subset of participants with local awareness of tethered dogs. Public support for criminalizing dog tethering was more strongly associated with emotional responses, particularly anger, than with the demographic or cognitive variables included in the models. These findings highlight the role of emotional engagement in shaping public concern for canine welfare and underscore the relevance of the human–animal bond to forensic and legislative responses to tethering.