Hello forum, I am a foreigner and don’t speak any Portuguese, I have some connections to this land and visit from time to time, always the same place.

There is one thing that has been bothering me everytime I visit, when I go by car to the place I always stay I pass by a house with a pen every single time. This pen has a fence around it with two trees inside and a black dog tied by a leash to a tree. Every time I come to this country (2 times a year), and everytime I drive by that house (which I almost always do whenever I take the car someplace) the same dog is always tied up on a leash to a tree in the same pen, morning, day, and evening when I have driven by, and I have been coming to this country for almost 2 years now. I even looked the place up on google satellite, and even on street-view you can still see the same dog tied to the tree with a leash. I might fear that the dog spends almost the entire day, everyday of the week on a leash to that tree, if not he has been tied up for weeks, or months, years, or even his whole life! Everything I know about treatment of dogs tells me this is wrong, if they are gonna keep the dog outside in the pen why do they also put it on a leash since it is still fenced in anyway?

Even though I think it is wrong, the question to me is it actually illegal? Is there anything I can do about this situation? Since I don’t speak any Portuguese, I am not here often, and I don’t know the law I don’t think I can act on this, but I wonder if I can inform someone who deals with situations like this. I think what would be best were if I informed someone or some people about what I have seen and where, and they could go to the place and assess the situation for themselves.