[stephen426]

I think the best thing to do is get a strong defense spray such as pepper spray or mace. The bear spray thing should work too. I would go with a spray that sends out a mist rather than a stream. While the stream has more range, the fog covers much more area. Dogs, with their sensitive noses, will most likely turn tail and run.

I am a dog lover and I really would not want to shoot anyone's beloved pet when a non-lethal option is available. I'm sure you will probably get a lawsuit from the dog owner as well and he will spin his side of the story. As it was mentioned, a moving dog is a very hard target to hit. Think of how many people you could be endangering in the neighborhood with stray shots. If you can carry a gun, you can also carry a personal defense spray. While it is not as macho, it will deter most dogs. Go ask your postman what his experience is. I'll bet they don't carry guns to shoot agressive dogs.

If a dog is not deterred by the defense spray and it is causing serious injury to my dog, I would shoot it at point blank or contact range to avoid any chances of missing. This would obviously be the very last option. If the dog was attacking a person, I would still consider using the defense spray first since there would be a risk of shooting the bite victim. They would recover a lot faster from a dose of pepper spray than a bullet wound!