Neighbor's dog roaming free. What to do?

One of my neighbors has been letting their large dog roam around without a leash (that’s not a picture of the actual dog in question, but it looks just like that). We’re not sure which neighbor it belongs to. All of our properties are relatively far apart, set back a ways from the road, with lots of tree cover between and woods behind. I doubt the dog is dangerous, but I don’t know that for sure and I don’t know how to tell. I am not a dog person. I’ve always been scared of them since I was bitten as a child.

There have been a number of incidents, and we’ve gotta do something. Not to mention, this is on a road with a 45mph speed limit. It’s not safe for the dog!
[ul]
[li] The first time I ever saw him, I was coming home from work in the rain. The dog was standing between my car and the front door. I didn’t feel safe walking past it, and had to sit there until it got bored and ran away.[/li][li]We’ve had multiple delivery people refuse to get out of their cars because he’s in our yard.[/li][li]Last night I was rounding the corner onto our street after dark (5:30pm) and he was gamboling about in the middle of the damn road![/li][/ul]
We can’t build a fence, we’re renting. We’ll be moving next summer, but we’re stuck here until then. I don’t know how we can call animal control unless we capture it first, because he just runs willy-nilly all the time. If I called them every time I saw the dog, he’d never be in the same place by the time they came out. We can’t talk to the neighbor without knowing whose dog it is. I’m too scared to try to capture it, don’t know where I could even put him, and my boyfriend is on crutches through the end of the year.

Any suggestions? The dog has a collar and looks well-fed & relatively clean, but there are leash laws for a reason. We left a message with our local SPCA today to see if they have any advice. Now I’m picking the collective brains here for a potential solution.

Two options:

  1. Tell the neighbor to not let their dog roam.

  2. If you don’t want to do that, look up the leash laws in your municipality or county. There is probably some animal control or similarly named organization covering one or the other. You can most likely just call them and say, “we have a dog roaming the neighborhood off leash, is this against the law?”

In most incorporated municipalities (all that I’ve ever lived in) you aren’t allowed to let dogs roam around off leash. Typically a call to the police department (non-emergency, and I’d only do this in a small town as big city police departments probably would never respond to the call) or the animal control agency will eventually get someone out there who will go talk to the owner about it and warn them or possibly cite them. If you do that a few times the owner will either get the message or not, but they’ll be getting fined at some point for not complying.

If your locality has a leash law and an animal control department you call them with a description. They are equipped to catch and confine the dog.

Call animal control. They’ll look around for the dog and catch him. They can also check dog licenses to find out who owns him.

We had an issue a few years ago where my neighbor was letting my dogs out of our back yard and then calling animal control. The first time I had no idea it was malicious and thought they had figured out how to open the gate. The second time I was ticketed and we put padlocks on the gate. The third time they agreed that there was no way the dogs had unlocked the padlock themselves and did not ticket me and we secured the gate to keep people out rather than dogs in and it never happened again.

On all three occasions though they were in the area for 10 - 20 mins looking for and rounding up the dogs.

I like dogs, well behaved dogs with responsible owners

But I feel your pain R. In some areas, large dogs roaming is culturally acceptable and those that own roamers don’t mind roamers. I am not in that category, and used to have daily run ins with “oscar” the aged loud barky irish setter mix that did not like me…at all. Waiting at bus stop with preschoolers he would come up barking at us, loudly and persistently. I wanted to kkill it…i really did. Instead I had to repeatedly ask nicely his owners to tie him up. They kinda complied…

Some folks think dogs need to run free in the country. Dealing with that again, guy is finally getting his insane big dog on a leash. It had a doggie warrant out on it in another county, hence it’s owner stashed it in my neighborhood,it runs after cars all the time, totally unpredictable from puppyhood.

what you have to do , is look fierce and don’t look at the dog, and walk around your house like it’s your domain the dog doesn’t exist.he might wag his tail and ofllow you or bark, but walk past him anyway…pretend to be the alpha :wink:

I’d start by talking to neighbors to see if anyone knows who’s dog that is.
Since you are afraid of dogs maybe you’ll even get lucky and someone else will talk to the owner about it. Someone needs to tell them to keep the dog in their yard or it’s going to get run over.

If the dog in question is like the one pictured, what you have on your hands is a yellow lab. Speaking generally, your biggest concern is getting slobbered on. But that’s in no way any excuse to let a dog run loose, and any dog can be aggressive. The advice here is solid. If he gets picked up by animal control, he’ll likely be adopted out in no time - labs are typically great dogs, and find homes quickly.

Wow, what an asshole! I wish this guy HAD a gate, that would be perfect.

This area is a little isolated, but very far from rural. The properties are spread out but right next to a local highway. There is not enough room and it’s not safe enough to justify letting a dog roam free here, unfortunately.

Like Munch said, its a yellow lab. Labs are known for their friendly and sweet character. They are the dog of choice for families with babies and kids, for instance. The original purpose of the breed was to retrieve shot waterfowl, and for that the dogs needed to be very obedient and have a very soft bite so they wouldn’t damage the birds. I hope knowing that makes you a little less afraid.

Of your fear of dogs bothers you, and you would like to understand them better and feel different about them, check out some episodes of Cesar Milans The Dog Whisperer. It is probably easier to change yourself then to expect the owner to spend money on a fence or pen, or to keep his beloved dog indoors alone all day.

Talk to your neighbors to find out if they know whose dog it is. And even if they don’t know whose it is, don’t be afraid to let them know you’re afraid of the beast. Word tends to get around, and odds are good you’ll find out who the owner is in reasonably short order. Odds are also good that the owner doesn’t realize the dog is bothering anyone because it’s a Lab and your real greatest danger is getting scratched with toenails when it tries to climb into your lap. Once they find out the dog is actually a problem, they may well start keeping him up.

Forget all this, “Oh, it’s just a lab!!” nonsense. Dogs that look like that can (and DO) bite.

I would leave letters in all the local mailboxes describing the dog, and saying you plan on pepper spraying it if you see it on your property again. Then do it. It won’t kill the dog, but it will teach it to stay the hell away from you and your yard.

My sweet (but large and scary looking) dog got pepper sprayed by some workers years ago. That was bullshit, because she was fenced in our yard and they were on the other side of the fence, but regardless, she wasn’t permanently damaged or anything.

Well, of course. Any and every dog on the whole planet can and WILL bite under the right circumstances. Odds are, however, greatly in your favor when calculating the likelihood that any given Lab is going to charge and attack you simply for walking through your own yard while it’s present. Odds are strongly against any dog of any breed randomly attacking you with no provocation, to be totally honest. Even the nasty little shits owned by my neighbors who would come into my driveway to bark and growl at me for being in my own front yard weren’t gonna charge anybody.

Labs can bite - but probably only if sick or abused in some way. Before I looked at the picture I thought this must be a monster dog of some kind.

The first thing I’d do is to find someone not scared of dogs to get the dog to come, possibly using treats, so that you can read the collar, which I’d hope has a license and/or id tags. Then you can call the people directly and tell them you saw the dog almost get hit. (Might be a useful lie.) If they still won’t confine the dog, then call animal control. Chatting with neighbors also helps.
I used to be nervous around dogs, but now I’ve had some I understand them. But that takes time and experience.

In my experience, the greatest danger from Labs is the prodigious amount of fur they can shed. I’m afraid my Lab is attempting to extract the DNA from his fur and clone himself. :smiley:

But yes, this is good advice. Have someone who is comfortable around dogs try to see if he has identification on his collar. Being the people-friendly dogs that Labs are, he will probably run right up to the person and demand to be petted.

Just spritz him with some Halt dog repellent and let him be on his way.
He’ll learn to avoid you.

Agreed. We have a problem with off-leash dogs in my neighbourhood, too, so I got some dog pepper spray to take with me every time I go out walking in my neighbourhood. As for labs not biting, just google “labrador attacks” to see the results. Dogs can bite, period. I almost always walk with my little shopping cart with me, and for some reason, dogs hate that little cart. Somebody’s “good dog who would never bite” might get worked up by my shopping cart and go for me, which he wouldn’t be able to do if he was on-leash or in a yard like he is supposed to be.

There is a yard with a German Shepherd in it near me - that frigging smart dog waits until people get right by the fence, then he lunges at them, barking furiously. He scared the shit out of me a couple of times until I got smart and started walking on the other side of the street from him. I’m not saying your dog was doing that, but dogs in fences that are scaring people aren’t allowed to do that in my city, either.

That might solve the problem of the dog scaring Rachellelogram, but it doesn’t solve the problem of a dog at large when it isn’t supposed to be. I’d be calling Animal Control every time I see the dog at large - as many times at it takes until the dog stops being allowed to roam.

I sound like a real dog-hater in any thread on this subject; I actually like dogs pretty well. There are just so many irresponsible dog owners in my neighbourhood that have made me very sour on dogs being kept in a city like this.

I don’t think so. If I truly couldn’t figure out who the owners were, calling animal control is the way to go. If it has tags, it will be returned. If not, maybe it will be adopted by a family that cares enough about it to keep it safe.

Talk to your neighbors. Say something like, “Do you know whose lab that is that’s always running loose? I don’t know who he belongs to, but I’m going to call the pound when I see him out next.” The neighbors may know who the dog belongs to, or you’ll inadvertently get the right neighbor, they’ll get the hint and keep the dog contained. Then call the pound if you continue to see him running loose.

StG

On the flip side of the coin, he may be escaping instead of being allowed to roam free.

Instead of the scorched earth approach, couldn’t you just try shooing the lab away?

Yes, anything with teeth can bite but labs aren’t agressive and this one hasn’t shown any sign of aggression from anything you have said. It’s not like he went all Cujo on you or a deliveryperson. He’s a yard sitter. Throw a tennis ball if you want him to head away from you.

Not everyone is comfortable around dogs. It is not reasonable to expect a person who is afraid of dogs to have to shoo one away. I think in the circumstances, a call to animal control every time the dog makes an appearance isa reasonable response.