Quote Originally Posted by luvofallhorses
there is special pepper spray for dogs for that reason. better than beating the living hell out of the dog IMO. I would never beat my dogs over that, I would use the pepper spray that they make for dogs. I cannot believe a few of you would beat your dog if the dog attacked an animal.
You carry pepper spray? How many people out there carry pepper spray in the case that their dog attack someone or something? As was said, the owner didn't know his dog would attack anything. Even if your dog is the nicest dog in the world, it is still an animal with feelings, emotion, and reactions -- it still has the ability, potential, and physical traits that allow it to kill something. Does that mean we should all carry pepper spray? We didn't have pepper spray when my neighbor's dog killed my cat. What was our other option? If a dog was attacking your child, and you didn't have pepper spray, what would you do? Not only that --but pepper spray has been known to cause sudden death. I would hate to be responsible for both the death or serious injuries to both the dog in question as well as the attackee.

I completely agree that the dog should not have been offleash. However, I find it much easier said than done to teach a dog to stop killing whatever is in it's mouth. The problem with "calling a dog off" is that when you have a particularily drivey dog, in drive, it may or may not listen. Ask Glacier how easy it is to call a Siberian husky off small prey. 99% impossible. It is one thing to teach a normal dog to drop a ball or a stick. It is a completely different thing to command a dog to drop whatever it is killing when it is in drive mode. I have drivey dogs, I've trained drivey dogs -- I have been bitten to the point of blood and bruises from otherwise completely friendly animals, all because they were in drive and I was preventing them from doing what they wanted to do.