The idea of having Fido covered in something disgusting works well, as long as the dog goes home at night.
Unfortunately, in my area everyone lets their mutts run loose, and I have no idea who owns any particular dog. Plus the fact that they don’t always go home. I’ve had them hang out near my house for days at a time, hoping the cats will leave some food in their dishes. :no:
I had to have AC come and get one intact male Beagle who just would-not-leave! I put the catfood out of his reach, yet he refused to go. I hated to call AC because he was a real sweetheart, but he only had on a ratty old collar, with no ID.
Yet another option is catch the dog and call animal control to come get him or load him upo and drive him to the pound yourself. Tell them who owns him.
After having to retrieve their dog from the pound a few times, maybe they will get the idea.
We have neighbors who would let their trained hunting dogs (birding, but still. They had killed livestock) loose. They came running in our driveway and chased our already mentally wrecked cat up a tree, and she stayed there for a few hours.
Mom gave them a call, and told them “My dogs killed my cat, the dogs are now burried in our back yard. I’ll have no problem having your dogs join them.”
Disclaimer-Lots of people think my mom is crazy, because of events like this. Be careful.
“I am sorry, but you are not allowed under any circumstances on my property. It is not safe and you are not welcome here”. In your best school teacher voice. That should intimidate the little urchins who have probably never heard the word “No”.
I was a little jerk when I was a kid, too- ask my mother, who had great relationships with all my teachers! (OK, so I wasn’t like these darling children, but I was not a nice little kid.) I heard “no” all the time. I just didn’t listen.
Sure, I was but a shadow compared to these Satan spawn, but if I didn’t listen, no way these kids are. If the OP said something like this, her answer would probably be, “You’re not the boss of me!”
You know I remember the first BO when I moved down to KY, she always had these dogs running around, small pack consisting of everything large to small. Dogs would run beside the car and she would accdentally back over it or run one of them over occasionally. She did this four times. One of them, was a pure terror on four legs, known for chasing horses, she hit that one too and eventually was put down.
I just found it amusing that she rescued these dogs and then end up running them over in her SUV. Perhaps you should teach fido to run beside the car…
Any event the thing that made people stop feeding my mare (who has that oh so wonderful pony metabolism, and people even took her muzzle off because they thought it was cruel) was when I saw them do it I pulled them aside, and made them clean out the paddock and the run in sheds, by hand.
Logic being, you want to be in there so bad, fine, you can do my chores.
SLC, for the thing about the motocross bike go back a couple pages in this thread to my post about the rock salt shotgun shells.
Tom, i have this great picture in my head of a Linda Hamilton type female on a motocross bike with a pistol grip shotgun firing rocksalt and racking it one handed like she did in the trailer for the Terminator 2 movie! What a great visual. I’ll try the funnel idea I bet that is alot easier and you don’t need the tape then.
And for whoever said people were kidding about shooting dogs and kids with rock salt, no I"m not. All the events I have related herein are the gospel truth. It is very effective when done properly and an excellent deterrent. I still have some small scars on my butt to show for it, me and Forrest Gump we got shot in the butt-tocks.
When I am kidding or joking I put smiley faces in my posts thank you very much.
I would be very careful with shooting the dog, particularly if you seriously injure it. As stated, you could face retaliation and find yourself with an injured horse. However, I had an uncle who had an issue with the neighbors dog chasing his livestock. I want to say he had cows, but I wasn’t born then. He shot the dog one day, and a few days later the dog’s owner shot him. My uncle died over a conflict with the neighbors dog. So, be careful with what you do.
I am sorry to hear of your uncle. That’s beyond the scope of stupid for people to retaliate that way.
The key to getting rid of the dog, as someone put it is “shoot, shovel and shut up”. Never shoot an animal (except with rock salt-and these people seem too dumb to realize it if the dog had been shot), unless you intend to kill it. Make it a clean shot so the animal doesn’t suffer. If it was me, I would shoot the dog quickly the next time that it showed up on my place, dispose of it, and go on, never saying anything. When asked, reply nicely, “no, I haven’t seen it, thought it was staying home” and go on about the business.
The only time we have used rock salt was when our neighbors bull (Santa Gertrudis) jumped the fence to get in with our registerd certified herd of Polled Herefords. Daddy shot the bull with rock salt (after telling the owner to come get it-his response was that he had a good bull and it would put some good blood into our herd—arrgggghhh!This was in 82 and we had just spent 10k on half portion of our bull. Daddy shot the bull in the rump, and he turned around and charged us!!! I didn’t know my dad could move that fast! He called the owner and told him he had 1 hour to get the bull or he could come by that weekend for the cookout we were having…The bull got gotten, but the next year we had 3 half breed cull calves…ARGGHH. After that, Daddy swore he when it came time to get nasty, he would go all the way, and get rid of the problem asap clean and quick, no muss no fuss, and play dumb.
I’ve been following this thread with interest (and dread!) because I hope to buy my own property within the next 2 years-- i really dread nieghbor problems though! I am tempted to purchase my own bull, just for keeping people out… My first horse was notorious for chasing out dogs and did actually kill one that was harrassing a colt. If I can find another one like him I’ll be adding it to the herd for sure!
Good luck with the idiots though, and keep us posted!
I’d add one other thing: Make sure you’re damned good shot and aren’t likely to hit something else by accident. They make it look really easy in the movies and on television. But it’s hard to hit a moving target, unless you’ve had some practice. And a bullet from a .22 rifle can travel a long, long way – 1/4 mile or further – and still do some damage.
I’m all for defending livestock – we live in the country and have had issues with neighbors’ dogs. But we managed to resolve them without getting out the guns. That’s always the best practice, IMO.
Donkeys and llamas are both known to guard their herds, but how effective will they be against a pack? I am about to have to deal with this since I’m moving in late summer and already know there are several dogs running the property. The construction crew has seen them repeatedly. So far the neighbor’s dog has run them off, but he isn’t always loose. My JRT will run them off when we’re there, but sooner or later they will realize she isn’t really bigger than they are but only thinks she is.
When the pasture is graded and fenced with no-climb this won’t be an issue but until that time I’ll have two horses in hot tape. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think either one is a dog killer. At least my new neighbors are a complete non-issue (except for the dogs, but that’s everyone down there).
Good points. I’ll also add - bullets wind up somewhere - so shooting up into the air as a warning or where the bullet can ricochet - not a good idea. Because they do come down/to rest and you don’t want it to be in some innocent third party or yourself.
There was a pretty funny exchange in one of the more recent Stargate: SG1s where Teal’c starts shooting madly in a locked room and Mitchell is ducking and screaming, “Bullets BOUNCE!!” Usually they ignore stuff like that on tv.
