Being a father has taught me a new gold standard for fear. Also, a legal question.

[Crackerz]

In my haste to get things written down, I seem to have missed a few details. Any bolding in quotes is my own emphasis to make it clear what I am addressing. I also shortened a post or two to get under the post size limit.



My sights were always on the lead dog and several times my finger went to about 90% of the trigger pull needed to fire. The doubts in my head, and how close they already were is about what held me back.



The risk of neighbor retaliation was not really in my head at the time, but may have played a part in my hesitation because I've played through this scenario in my head before, and come to realize that some dog owners see their dogs in an irrational light and might feud over a dead dog even though it was attacking a person.



I do get 2 days of training 5 times a year. What I probably didn't do a good job of explaining in the original post is that if it was just me, I would have been much more decisive either to kill them, or to not kill them. Adding my pregnant wife and 2.8 kids to the mix and having the dogs clearly fixated on my kids really changed things in a fundamental way for me. I could probably put two into the lead dog in under a second (however, I've never shot at dogs before and they are a different size and movement speed and profile than humans). I didn't know whether that would stop, or start the fight. It might sound stupid of me, but as long as my family was moving steadily toward safety I didn't want to escalate the situation.

All that aside, this encounter mostly showed me a gap in the legal side of my training, and since I have a (small) influence on the focus of the classes, I will definitely be pushing this kind of issue to be covered in greater depth.

I know I'll always have gaps in the tactical side of training. I'm never going to be a HSLD operator. Since the only person paying for my training is me, and I can't dedicate the time, or money to attend classes more often than I do. If I can shoot better and faster than most, and I keep working on it, that's got to be enough for me. However, legal gaps must be fixed once identified. Upside: Getting my wife to a training class just just went from impossible to probable.



The main thing I was not prepared for was the speed that this went from a normal walk to "get any closer and this gets ugly". There may be things I could have done differently, but yeah, aside from just never taking my kids outside, there isn't much I could have done to avoid the situation.



I took today off work and have been looking and asking around for those dogs. I called AC and county pd last night, but while an officer came around and wrote some stuff down, he didn't get out of the car, and I never even saw an animal control vehicle. I thought I knew all the local dogs, these were not among them.



I did call animal control, they took some information, and I never saw them come around.



Don't take this the wrong way, but with my family on the line (and probably not if it was just me either), there is no way I'd go to a bleach solution in a spray bottle. An attorney whose advice I trust advised me against chemical sprays. So I don't carry it. If my gun had a selector switch to go from lead to OC, I might have used that, but I used what I did have.



You're so right about crazy owners.

I do carry a blade, but that's another thing I wouldn't have gone to in this situation. In the time it takes me to switch from knife to gun or vice versa, either of those dogs could have killed one of my kids.



This is exactly what I was thinking. I know this might not be true of dogs truly raised in the wild, but I felt that these two (and especially the lead dog) were kind of balanced on a knife edge between hunting(not acceptable in a neighborhood), and attacking (REALLY not acceptable). I was listening and watching their movements and body language closely I planned to get the first attack in if they went from hunting to attacking, but I didn't want to tip them that way as long as we were making our escape.

This is also why I wouldn't have tried to scare them off with the gun. The thought did cross my mind, but I dismissed it because, A: most importantly, I don't do warning shots, and have no way of knowing how they would have reacted to it. B: I would be shooting at asphalt and have little control of where that bullet went afterwards. C: as far as I know, if you're not justified in shooting them, you aren't justified in a shot to scare them off.

D: occurred to me later, but if my kids had been 15 feet from a gunshot they probably would have started crying. This might have been the final inciter for one or both of those dogs.

There were a few other reasons I wouldn't have tried to scare them off with a gunshot, but those are the biggies.



Thanks, I haven't found who owns them yet, but you can bet I will. I'm not going "dog hunting" or anything, but they live somewhere and I am going to find out where. They both had collars. I don't think I mentioned that in the original post, but it was one of the minor things that kept me from killing them, knowing that someone considers them a pet and may react in an appropriate (in their mind) way.



A thought that really kept me awake last night is that it could have been just me out there pulling the wagon with the kids. Even worse, it could have been just my wife out there with them. That's why once I find them, the owners will get a notification about this behavior, and if something like this happened again wither either or both of those dogs, they will probably get the notification that their dogs are dead.

Bottom line, I don't want to kill someones pet, but as a friend of mine in APD said last night, "They stopped being pets the minute they ran off together and started stalking your kids."

Thank you for a post exhibiting a tremendous amount of common sense regarding personal safety for you and your family. I think you are absolutely right on all counts. It is truly tragic, though, that we are influenced by the idea of a violent, vindictive reaction from an animal's owner in retribution for protecting yourself and family. Unfortunately, it's most likely that would happen, as I have experienced problems of the same sort. Some people are as or more protective of their animals than their children, and refuse to recognize, just as many are with their children, that either are capable of any wrong-doing of any kind. It's why dog attacks are growing more prevalent, and why children are so undisciplined in school. Neither little Johnny nor Fido are capable of doing any wrong in their parent/owner's eyes. It's always someone else's fault.

 

[Thor827]

I think you did the right thing. I'm glad the situation didn't escalate any further.

Hopefully you can find out who owns the dogs and get the problem solved. I would hate to see somebody else get hurt. I think that it will be easier since you held your cool. Explain the situation to the owner, and hopefully the problem won't happen again.

Those of us that own dogs have to take the responsibility that goes with it. I love my dog like he is my child, but I recognize that he is powerful and could be dangerous in the wrong situations. Because of this, he is NEVER outside without supervision. He is also NEVER left unsupervised with children. My dog is very sweet and loves to meet new people, but accidents happen, and I'm not going to put him or a potential victim in that position if I can help it.

 

[Thor827]

Thank you for a post exhibiting a tremendous amount of common sense regarding personal safety for you and your family. I think you are absolutely right on all counts. It is truly tragic, though, that we are influenced by the idea of a violent, vindictive reaction from an animal's owner in retribution for protecting yourself and family. Unfortunately, it's most likely that would happen, as I have experienced problems of the same sort. Some people are as or more protective of their animals than their children, and refuse to recognize, just as many are with their children, that either are capable of any wrong-doing of any kind. It's why dog attacks are growing more prevalent, and why children are so undisciplined in school. Neither little Johnny nor Fido are capable of doing any wrong in their parent/owner's eyes. It's always someone else's fault.

Well said.

 

[Joe45]

Well done sir. Nothing comes between me and my kids period so i know exactly how must have felt. You showed great restraint at a time of uncertainty and should be commended.

 

[Crackerz]

I think you did the right thing. I'm glad the situation didn't escalate any further.

Hopefully you can find out who owns the dogs and get the problem solved. I would hate to see somebody else get hurt. I think that it will be easier since you held your cool. Explain the situation to the owner, and hopefully the problem won't happen again.

Those of us that own dogs have to take the responsibility that goes with it. I love my dog like he is my child, but I recognize that he is powerful and could be dangerous in the wrong situations. Because of this, he is NEVER outside without supervision. He is also NEVER left unsupervised with children. My dog is very sweet and loves to meet new people, but accidents happen, and I'm not going to put him or a potential victim in that position if I can help it.

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[sparked1]

That is hilarious, and oddly informing.

 

[chiefsquirrel83]

Glad the pack of mixed breed strays did no harm you and your family...God Bless.

 

[TacticalTaco]

Get you a 9mm+p. That will take care of fido with the quickness.

 

[protective measures]

Based on the O.P.'s responses it sounds like you have a very solid handle on forming a plan for future issues with this or any other threat to you or your family.

Glad to hear you're training regularly.
Situations like this help reveal "holes" in our training. We call them "freebies" when a potentially deadly encounter happens & no one gets hurt.
We tell students in our classes all the time that you can't form a plan in the middle of a fight, but most often that is driven home in these kinds of events.

I'm glad that you/your family was not harmed & maybe the good to come from it is not only your widening the scope of your "protective measures" (sorry, just had to) but also that it may have been the catalyst to get your wife to develop a more defensive mindset.
Good luck to you both.

 

[SteelRinger]

Ok, this may not be the most popular opinion, but I have thick skin and can take it.

Maybe the dogs thought they were trying to protect your kids from you. As has been pointed out, dogs sometimes view children as other dogs. Especially those who are part of a family that has kids.

According to your account, they did not show aggression until you put yourself between your kids and the dogs and assumed an aggressive posture. Dogs can sense and are sometimes very responsive to human emotions. You already stated that you were afraid during the encounter. You also had quite a bit of adrenaline flowing. The fact that you vomited after is a good indication of that. Dogs can smell that. I am pretty sure that your wife was giving off a similar scent.

So, look at it from this perspective. The dogs see your kids as potential pack members and now they have two large predators (cuz that is how they view you) who are surrounding them and smell like aggression. There is a good chance that they were not looking at your kids at all. They were keeping tabs on your wife. In their eyes they were looking for a way to separate you and your wife (the aggressors) from potential pack-mates (your kids).

That would also explain the behavior once your wife and kids were in the house. Your relief at that causes your fear to subside. The "aggressive" smell declines and the potential pack mates are out of sight. Time to move on.

Now, I am not saying you didn't handle the situation correctly. They very well could have had ill intentions and would have attacked if provoked. Either way, the situation came out positive, so the actions to get there don't really matter in hindsight.

That being said, there is a good reason why "dog people" don't get attacked as much as "non-dog people". That is because us dog people will usually greet strange dogs with caution, but not fear or aggression. Once you start to exude fear or aggression, the dogs will react in kind.

So, I guess the point of all this is an adaptation of something that Bear44 posted here not too long ago: Meet every dog with cautious respect, but have a plan to kill them if necessary.