Protected Leads

Hate when your friends steal one of your pets?

Protected Leads is a simple server-side mod that makes leashing your pets ACTUALLY safe. Once you attach a lead to a fence, that fence and its leash knot become yours. Other players can't detach your animals, break the leash knot, destroy the fence, or claim it for themselves.

How does it work?

Protected Leads works automatically.

The first player to attach a leashed animal to an unprotected block becomes the owner of that exact block and its leash knot. This works on any block a lead can be tied to — fences, walls, and anything else the game allows — but since fences are the normal case, that's what the rest of this page calls them.

From that point forward, the block is protected from every other non-OP player. Ownership is based on who attached the lead first, not who owns or tamed the animal.

So if your friend owns a horse, but you are the player who attaches that horse to an unprotected fence, that fence belongs to you.

What does it protect?

Once a fence becomes protected, other players cannot interfere with the setup through normal gameplay.

• Players cannot detach your animals from the fence
• Players cannot interact with or remove the leash knot
• Players cannot attack or break the leash knot
• Players cannot break the protected fence
• Players cannot attach their own animals to your fence
• Players cannot indirectly destroy the protected fence
• Players cannot steal the lead by attempting to remove the setup

Actual block protection

Protected Leads does more than just block right-click interactions.

Protected fences are protected from environmental and mechanical destruction too.

• TNT explosions cannot destroy protected fences
• Creeper explosions cannot destroy protected fences
• Fire cannot burn protected fences
• Lava cannot burn protected fences
• Pistons cannot push or crush protected fences
• Other ordinary block destruction mechanics cannot remove protected fences

Only the protected block itself is preserved. When a creeper goes off next to a protected fence, the explosion still happens and everything else around it still breaks — the protected block is simply dropped from the blast's list. Protected Leads does not disable explosions or fire anywhere else in the world.

Persistent ownership

Your fence does not suddenly become unprotected because nobody is nearby.

Protected Leads permanently stores the owner of every protected fence in the world save itself.

• Protection survives server restarts
• Protection survives chunk unloading and reloading
• Protection remains while the owner is offline
• Protection remains if the animal unloads
• Protection remains if the animal is temporarily gone
• Protection remains when nobody is near the fence

If you protected a fence yesterday, another player still cannot touch it today just because you are offline.

The fence stays yours

Removing the animal or lead does not remove ownership.

If you detach your animal and leave the fence behind, the fence remains protected and still belongs to you.

You can come back later and attach another animal to that same fence without having to claim it again. Other players cannot wait until the fence is empty and claim it for themselves.

Protection is only removed when the owner breaks their own protected fence, when a server operator breaks it, or when an operator clears it with /protectedleads remove.

The owner still gets normal Minecraft behavior

Protected Leads is designed to stay out of the owner's way.

If you own the protected fence, you can still use it normally.

• Attach animals
• Detach animals
• Interact with the leash knot
• Remove the leash knot
• Break your own fence (which clears the protection along with it)

Protected Leads only steps in when another player attempts to interfere with something you own. Denials are silent — there is no chat spam, the action simply does nothing.

Server-side only

Players do not need to install Protected Leads.

The mod runs entirely on the server. Players can join with their normal Minecraft client without installing Protected Leads themselves.

There are no custom blocks, custom items, custom entities, inventories, menus, or required client-side packets.

Works on dedicated servers, LAN worlds, and client-hosted worlds (including Essential's world hosting). Only the host installs it — everyone joining plays with a normal client.

Admin controls

Server operators bypass protection entirely.

Protected Leads also includes simple commands for recovering or inspecting protected fences.

• /protectedleads info checks whether the block you are looking at is protected and shows ownership information
• /protectedleads remove removes protection from the block you are looking at

Both commands work whether you target the block itself or the leash knot attached to it. They are intended for server administration and recovery rather than normal gameplay.

Made for multiplayer

Protected Leads is especially useful on survival servers where players build near each other, share towns, keep horses outside buildings, or leave pets tied somewhere while they explore.

You should not have to hide your animals inside a locked building just because somebody might walk past and decide your horse belongs to them now.

Simple by design

Protected Leads is not a land claiming mod.

It does not protect your entire base, chunks, containers, doors, farms, or random blocks. It only protects blocks that have been claimed through the normal act of attaching a lead to them.

Attach a lead to a fence, and that fence becomes yours. That's it.

Compatibility

• Minecraft Java Edition: 26.2
• Mod Loader: Fabric
• Environment: Server-side
• Client installation required: No
• Dependency: Fabric API

Protected Leads hooks explosion block lists, fire burnout, piston movement and general block destruction. It only ever acts on positions that are actually claimed, so unclaimed blocks behave exactly as vanilla — but if you run another protection or grief-prevention mod that touches the same systems, test them together before deploying to a busy server.

Installation

1. Install Fabric Loader on your server
2. Install Fabric API
3. Place Protected Leads into the server's mods folder
4. Start the server

No client installation or additional setup is required.

FAQ

Does every player need Protected Leads installed?
No. Protected Leads is completely server-side.

What happens if the owner logs out?
Nothing changes. Their protected fences remain protected.

Can somebody claim my fence after I remove my animal?
No. The fence remains yours even when there is no leash or animal attached.

Can another player tie their own animal to my fence?
No. A protected block belongs entirely to its owner, so nobody else can attach anything to it.

Is ownership based on who tamed the pet?
No. Ownership belongs to whoever attached the lead to the block first.

Can explosions destroy protected fences?
No. The protected block is preserved while surrounding unprotected blocks are still destroyed normally.

Can protected wooden fences burn?
No. Protected blocks are protected from fire and lava destruction. Fire spreads normally everywhere else.

Can server operators bypass protection?
Yes. Operators bypass protection entirely, and an operator breaking a protected block clears its protection along with it.

Does this protect my entire base?
No. Protected Leads only protects claimed blocks and their leash knot. It is intentionally not a land claiming system.

Will this come to other versions besides 26.2?

Probably not unless specifc versions are requested.

Why Protected Leads?

Protected Leads was originally made to solve a real problem on a multiplayer server: keeping leashed animals where they were actually left.

It ended up being useful enough that there was no reason to keep it private.

If you've ever tied up a horse, dog, or other animal somewhere and immediately wondered which one of your friends was going to mess with it, this mod is for you.