You know, I would agree with Basilmom and others but I find I have a different bottom line. One part of me would be the one holding the stungun or the cattleprod, or the rope to the carcasses or the gate to the hog pen as has been suggested above, but no matter how low a person has slunk in their lives I can't imagine the inhumanity it would take to treat them- a human being- as they have treated someone/thing weaker than themselves. It is unimaginable to most of us to do the dastardly deeds they think of as mere sport. But to treat a fellow human that way would drop one to a new level, no? I say, big fat fine, jail time, neuter, and muck barns for a couple years. In other words, I'm on the fence, outraged and yet teeter on the abyss of compassion; darn me.

Well, having had a dog that was aggressive towards strangers, I totally disagree with some of the above posters who say it's the dog owner's fault totally. I spent hundred's of dollars on trainers, behaviorists, rescue remedy etc. My dog had a screw loose. He was wonderful with our family and my young children. He just didn't see any reason for anyone else to come into our yard or house. It was very stressful having Kobe because I had to know where he was at all times. He had to be crated, or on his leash if I knew someone was coming over. He finally bit my neighbor - not a terrible bite, but enough to break the skin. I called up the breeder where I had gotten him and explained I couldn't keep him. She told me, "His daddy was always difficult around strangers too." I was like - who breeds a dog with a bad temperament? Anyways, she took him back, they live out in the country on a farm and since he was so well trained, they kept him in their house as a pet. I agree 100% that your neighbor needs to take action and probably have the dog put down. That was what I was going to do if the breeder wouldn't take him back. My dog's main problem was he was extremely fearful of people, and when he felt threatened, he became aggressive. He wasn't a mean dog, just saw things as threatening when they weren't at all. I cried more tears over this dog - he loved us all to death, and I loved him too. He just couldn't handle living in suburbia. I couldn't give him up to someone who didn't understand him because I was afraid they'd become violent with him when he lunged at people etc. Amazingly enough, he did well back on the farm where they didn't want any strangers just walking up their road or coming to their house. I also have to say, the comments about electric fences are just silly. Electric fences are for keeping your dog in your yard when they go out to pee, or to let them run around untethered. They are not designed to have a dog stay outside 24x7. Any dog who cannot be trained to stay within an electric fence has other training issues. My crazy dog Kobe was excellent in his fence. He just didn't like it when anyone came inside HIS fence. My current dog's collar just hangs like a necklace - he wouldn't even get shocked if he went through. He knows his boundries and when he hears the clicking warning sounds, he knows he can go no farther. I do agree that they do not protect your dog from other dogs or predators - but that's why I would never leave my dog outside for long periods of time or without checking on him. Many people can't have a fence due to trees around their property line or the sheer size of their yard. The electric fence is a great tool to allow your dog running room without them having to be on a leash.

For those not interested in the somewhat O/T discussion of pit bulls, feel free to skip over this post. angelaid, I'm glad you reported your experience with dog bite claims made involving (or more accurately, not involving, pit bulls.) I have struggled reading through various statistics, reports, etc. that try to evaluate whether pits are inherently more aggressive than other breed types. As most all of us know, statistics typically can be manipulated to support whatever outcome is desired by the person/group funding the report. That means there are reports on both sides, some saying pits are dangerous, some saying that pits are no more dangerous than other breeds. So, you have to do some deep digging to find out what assumptions and data sets were used in arriving at the conclusions in any particular report. Some of the more recent and (I think more fairly) conducted research dispels a lot of the previously believed "truths" about pit bulls. Without going into great detail, more recent reports have identified a couple of main problems with previous reports concluding that pits are involved in more bites/attacks than other breeds by several magnitudes of order. The first problem is that previous reports included data where victims/witnesses self-identified the type of dog involved in the attack. This resulted in just about any dog with a square head and muscular body being called a "pit bull." The study presented people with a poster with photographs of 16 different dogs and asked if people could identify which of the 16 were "pit bulls." (Only 3 of the 16 were pits.) It has been a while since I read the study, but if I recall correctly, less than 10% of people could correctly identify the 3 true pit bulls on the poster. The other 90% could not only NOT correctly identify which of the dogs was a pit, but they over identified a dog as being a pit bull 75% of the time. So dogs that did not have a trace of "pit" DNA in them were being wrongly identified as pits in a vast majority of instances. Based on these misidentifications, the researchers concluded that previous claims that pit bulls were involved in 4, 5, 10 (whatever number) times the number of bites than other breeds are simply unreliable and not accurate. When researchers controlled for identification bias by looking only at bite data where DNA or a veterinarian identified a dog's breed, the number of pit bull involved bites decreased dramatically - lower than German Shepherds, Rottweilers, and even Chihuahuas. There was no longer any support for the presumption that pits were X times more likely to bite than other breeds. Finally, (as I've already gone on more than I intended to), second problem the more recent studies have dealt with is to see if of those breeds still at the top of the bite list have a genetic disposition to be more human aggressive. This has been a bit more difficult to study, but it does appear there is a correlation between owners and dog bites. Quickly, the study found that people who are drawn to own a pit, rottweiler, etc., are more likely to have a criminal history involving domestic abuse and to have more contacts with animal control regarding not properly restraining/containing the dogs in a yard. Although there is not now enough evidence to show a cause and effect, the researchers find support for the idea that dogs who are treated violently or who are left to roam the neighborhood are more likely to be involved in human bite incidents than those dogs who are not regardless of the breed.

Interesting Oakley that Wood Sage and Sea Salt had such a bad beginning for you. But glad it was pleasant in the end. I've had other things like that but can't remember what they were right now. And sometimes I've had the opposite too of something I thought I liked originally then after a bit it was terrible. Thank goodness for samples!!! For you 'bad dog smell', if they are rugs, I'd set them outside in the sun and fresh air a few hours and that always did it for my Mom when we had a dog. Of course if the rug is large, that's no easy task! I had great luck with bad smells from a healthcare worker that we had for my Dad not too long ago. Talk about perfume overload!! She used essential oils, smoked cigarettes and then tried to cover all that up with some sort of strong cleaner or laundry detergent and a strong mouthwash!! I could smell ALL the layers. Yuk!! I was gagging and could not get 10 feet from her. We had to cover the chair she sat in with a blanket so it wouldn't permeate the fabric. My Dad had lost most of his sense of smell and he smoked cigars so it did not bother him plus she was great with him so I just put up with it. But I couldn't stand it and by the 3rd evening we had gotten an Orek air purifier. It was a larger newer model that I had used before but worked fantastic. I could now be in the same room with her. And by the next day, it was the freshest smelling room in the house. And she was no longer ruining the furniture. Maybe this could work for you? No I don't work for Orek or anything, just reporting what worked well for us and saved us from having to fire an otherwise great worker. The new bigger one we used is called Orek DualMax Air Purifier and the smaller size we had before was called the XL Professional Air Purifier. I've since even used the big one to get cigarette smoke and mothball smells out of a few leather purses and after a few days they smelled like leather again. In fact, I'm doing this same thing as a favor for a few friends of mine. Hope you can find something that can help you.