Alabama Senate Bill 361 Targets Outdoor Dog Tethering and Confinement Standards

Rep. Phillip Ensler, D-Montgomery, has been trying to get a tethering and confinement bill to the House floor for two consecutive sessions. This time, he's carrying Senate Bill 361 in the House, and the House Committee on Agriculture and Forestry approved a substitute version identical to the Senate version. The difference from last year: the bill has now moved to the House floor, with six days left in the 2026 legislative session.

Senate Bill 361, known as Beau's Law, would require dog owners to provide adequate shelter, access to clean water, food, and care, and humane tethering practices. The bill is sponsored in the Senate by Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, and the Senate passed the legislation with no discussion by a vote of 28-1. That lopsided margin in the upper chamber did not, however, prevent friction in the House committee.

Reps. Brent Easterbook, R-Fruitdale, and Van Smith, R-Prattville, opposed the bill in committee, arguing that tethering dogs inhumanely is an urban problem, not a rural issue. Smith called the bill "overkill" for rural areas. The bill's sponsors built in exemptions to address exactly those concerns. The bill exempts temporary situations like running into a grocery store and grooming, and hunting, service and working dogs would also be excused from the standards. It also forbids tying a dog to a stationary object like a tree, stake, or structure without a trolley system for long periods of time, and bans logging chains and choke or pinch collars as ways to tether dogs.

Ensler framed the bill as a tool for officers who currently have no enforceable baseline. He said the bill will give animal control officers "legal teeth" to intervene when they see people treating dogs inhumanely. "The idea is not to nitpick, go after every little thing, it's to at least just provide some more framework because right now the law is not very clear," Ensler said. Under the bill, law enforcement officers with probable cause that someone has violated the established standards of care could order the owner to change the dog's living conditions, or remove the dog if they believe the animal's life is in danger.

The Greater Birmingham Humane Society called the bill the most significant effort to establish care standards since 2000. Alabama ranks as the second worst state in the nation for animal protection laws, according to the annual U.S. Animal Protection Laws Rankings Report, which highlights deficiencies in general cruelty statutes, veterinary reporting, and civil enforcement. That ranking is the share hook here: every owner of a high-energy dog who spends real time outdoors, whether running a yard on a trolley system or working a fence line, is operating in a state with almost no legal floor under which conditions cannot fall.

Supporters warn that the House Rules Committee will control whether Beau's Law ever reaches the floor in the final weeks of the session, when many bills are competing for limited debate time. Ensler carried a similar bill last year without ever getting a floor vote. With the clock now down to the final days of the 2026 session, the House floor vote is the last gate standing between Alabama dogs and the first statewide tethering standard in a generation.