A reader emailed about this encounter:<\/p>\n
Just had a hair raising close call here. One of my neighbors has two very large German Shepherd dogs. He lets them run loose when he is with them and they never seemed to be a problem until today.<\/p>\n
I carried my 9mm carbine down to the fence along the road today because those two dogs were chasing one of the horses just across the road from me. He was kicking at the dogs, and darn near nailed one too. The dogs didn’t seem to be trying to bring the pony down, but they were all running fast and at any time the pony could have stepped into a hole and broken its leg or gotten hurt running into the barbed wire.<\/p>\n
The law here is very clear that any dog harming or harassing livestock may be shot without warning or any repercussions. I’m not clear whether or not that applies only to the owner of the livestock, and family\/employees, but I would not have hesitated to shoot if it had gone on any longer. The owner of the horses didn’t get involved until after the dogs were led away… and he wasn’t armed.<\/p>\n
The owner of the dogs was running around after them like an idiot, shouting at the dogs with zero influence on them, but just as I got into position, he managed to grab one of them and got them sort of, kind of under control – so I just watched as he led them back to his own property.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if he noticed the gun or not… but hope he did. All I can say is that he’d damn well better keep those dogs at home from now on.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I wondered what your readers would think about such a situation, and what they would be willing\/ready to do about it. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What are your thoughts on this? What would you do (or what do you think<\/i> you’d do) in this situation? If you saw the chase beginning and had a choice of weapon to bring, what weapon in your arsenal would you be most likely to grab? What, if anything, would you say to the dog-walking neighbor, then or later? How about to the horse-owning neighbor? How would you feel during and after?<\/p>\n
The easy response, as we sit in our comfy armchairs or at our office desks, is to snort, “I’d just shoot the damn mutts and be done with it!” But the reality is a lot more complicated, tactically, diplomatically, and emotionally.<\/p>\n
I expect that the average gun owner is a lot more likely to run into a situation like this (or to have to defend pets from a four-legged or winged predator) than to confront a human predator with a firearm. Worth thinking about.<\/p>\n
ADDED<\/b>: ML makes the excellent point that how we handle situations like this one says a lot about how we might handle a deadly SHTF confrontation. Or any other potentially deadly human encounter. Also worth thinking about.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reader emailed about this encounter: Just had a hair raising close call here. One of my neighbors has two very large German Shepherd dogs. He lets them run loose when he is with them and they never seemed to be a problem until today. I carried my 9mm carbine down to the fence along the road today because those two dogs were chasing one of the horses just across the road from me. He was kicking at the dogs, and darn near nailed one too. The dogs didn’t seem to be trying to bring the pony down, but they…<\/p>\n