Since we have another loose dog attack thread, I'm going to tell ya'll about my worst loose dog attack, and maybe there's something to learn from it.
I was on active duty at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, this was in the 1970's and I was living off base with a girlfriend on a small farm, only about 6ish acres. She had chickens and one horse to pleasure ride. We had good fencing and the coop was fully enclosed, so the chicken loss was minimal.
Unfortunately, this little bit of paradise had one ringer, the next door neighbors. They were the classic examples of "white trash", lived in a trailer, *always* drunk, had "pit bulls" ( of which they were strangely proud of, but took crappy care of ) running loose constantly and they were the bane of the area. Their entire clan were well known to local law enforcement.
Every neighbor had complained to the Sheriff at least twice about these loose dogs, but they were never caught by the law, so the best that the Sheriff could tell us was "well, if they look to be attackin' you or your livestock, the law says you can protect yourself.....".
Sooo........we're on our deck and see the pit bulls running on our land headed straight for the horse in our pasture ( we later saw the area that they had dug to get under our fence ) , I had girlfriend call the Sheriff ( there was no 9-1-1 in those days ) , and I reached inside the doorway to grab my brand new HK91 with a full 20 round magazine that I have just for this kind of occasion.
The horse ran in circles but took bites periodically on its rear legs and I was having a hard time getting a clear shot at the dogs without possibly hitting the horse.
Finally the horse pulled a bit ahead of the dogs and I was able to hit all three using 5 shots, one of the dogs dropped immediately, one was howling pitifully and I put another round into it and killed it, and the last one was badly wounded but slowly still chasing the horse, and I put 2 more rounds into it to be humane, and shot the first dog again to insure that it was dead.
Girlfriend runs to try and catch horse and treat its wounds ( we were lucky to get the Vet out to our place quickly, country vets are the *best* ) and I'm now temporarily deaf from all the shooting. And then I see it......
I actually saw the female neighbor climbing/pushing down my fence ( it's barbed wire! ) in her housecoat, and carrying an axe. After her less than graceful climb, she starts waddling towards me screaming and waving the axe.
Now she's better than 100 yards from us, she's 300 lbs. of heavy smoking white trash, she won't get to us anytime soon but if she wanted to bring an axe to a rifle fight, that was A-OK with me.....
A Deputy pulls up, has a brief "WTH?" moment and I yell that I'm the homeowner and about to be attacked with a lethal weapon. Deputy ( to his credit, he was fast *and* brave ) tackled trailer mama like an NFL pro. She stupidly fights him ( did I mention that they were *always* drunk?) and she get night-sticked into submission and cuffed.
She taken to County still yelling death threats to us.
I was kind enough to dump her dead dogs back over onto her property for disposal.
Her husband was already in jail, and three days later their trailer burned to the ground while they were still in jail.
We saw them only once when they returned to pick through the remains of their trailer, and that was the last we ever saw of them. They didn't even bother to bury their dogs, they were just classy to the end.
Learning points:
If you think that there's a chance that certain dogs will be problems to you in the future, be proactive!! Complain to local law enforcement and whoever will listen.
If your neighbors are also bothered by the same dog/dogs, get them to complain also!
Know your State and local laws and be on the right side of them if an episode happens.
Don't allow yourself to be bullied when you're in the right!