oriondw said:
Is there anything I can do legally about a roaming dog in heat?
We had a dog follow us for 2 miles today trying to get to us, had to chase it off.
Female dog. After we chased it off, we proceeded to sniff everyplce she been at for like 5 minutes...
Can animal control get that dog? The owner just lets her outside to roam.
I was in this same situation just about 6 years ago. I was walking King and a neighbor's dog, Goofy, a Husky/Lab mix followed us and kept wanting to play with King. It never even dawned on me she might be in heat. Finally, we went home, and a little bit later, I put King into the back yard, with Molly, and a few minutes later, Goofy and my dogs are running around, and I just figured "Oh well, let them have fun". I was going to take Goofy home after I got dinner over with. Goofy totally ignored the invisible fence the neighbor's had, and was loose most of the time. Goofy was friendly, to put it mildly, and to keep peace, I wasn't going to call animal control, I didn't need any wars with neighbors, I had already had one in the past, and didn't need the hassles.
I see King "humping" her, nothing new there, he used to hump just about every dog anyway, so I didn't do anything. All of a sudden, I see the dreaded "Step over" and there they are, joined up. King was 9 months old. After they uncoupled, I took Goofy home and told my neighbor that I would pay for the "day after" shot to prevent pregnancy. She told me not to worry about it, and I thought that was it.
About four months later, I'm going down the street with my mother in the truck, and I see EIGHT pups at the end of the driveway, seven are black and white, and one is black and tan. No doubt who the daddy is, they all look just like him and the seven black and white ones all have the same pattern that King and Molly have. No other dog, except for a neutered near duplicate of King looks like him around here. There's a good chance the King clone is a littermate, as they got him about the same time, and when they saw each other the first time, there was terrible screaming as soon as they sniffed each other. The only time King or Molly had screamed like that was when they have run into one of their littermates. With 11 of them out there, we have verified 5 and that dog would be one more.
Goofy sadly was hit by a car during one of her escapes. The pups all got good homes, and the neighbor's kept the black and tan pup, Dilbert, who appears to be a slightly larger chip off the old block (King). Very dominant, sleeps like a cat, and "talks" like him too.
I didn't know the neighbor was one of the most zealous anti-abortion people in this area until after I saw the pups. I didn't know it extended to dogs too!
They did neuter Dilbert, and I had King neutered too, at three to prevent cancer later on. I didn't do it sooner as I have seen too many great pups either blow up like a balloon afterwards, or they had a major change in their behavior that I didn't want King to undergo, so I waited. He hasn't mellowed a bit!
