Situation like that. I'm not calling anybody. The issue was handled, and the less people involved the better IMO
Back in the mid-1990s, my father was attacked by a bear dog that had run down and killed a deer.
He was out hunting with an antique Martini-action rifle in a now-obsolete cartridge (.41 Swiss) with hand loaded ammunition formed from .348 Winchester brass. He found a deer carcass. While he was examining it, a bear dog came up on him. When he extended his hand towards the dog, it bit his hand and arm. He attempted to shoot the dog, but the rifle misfired. He attempted to fend the dog off with the rifle barrel while frantically trying to recock the rifle and fire the round. Despite repeated attempts, the round would not fire. Because the custom ammunition was very tight, the dud round would not eject (the ejector was not strong enough to eject unfired rounds). His folding knife was in a sheath and he could not reach it while holding the rifle with both hands.
A second dog came up and began fighting with the first one. This gave him enough of a respite to use the wooden ramrod to eject the dud round. The first dog ran off the second dog and then attacked him again. He shot the dog.
He reported the incident to animal control. Animal control told him to go get his wounds checked out and bring in the dog’s head for rabies testing. He did both these things.
The dog’s owner followed the tracking collar onto our farm, where he found the headless dog and the deer carcass. He promptly called his friend/cousin in the DA’s office. The DA charged my dad with malicious wounding of an animal. His first lawyer tried to get him to take a plea deal that would have resulted in “only” 30 days in jail. he had to hire a second lawyer to get someone who cared more about his clients than his relationship with the DA. The judge eventually dismissed the criminal case for lack of evidence.
We went through three years of criminal and civil litigation before the matter was settled. I’ve known self-defense homicide cases wrapped up more quickly and with less trouble.
There’s a lot of local backstory to the whole mess, stuff going back to business dealings between my grandfather and the dog owner’s grandfather, previous disputes over poaching, people being members of different political parties, people “not being from around here” despite having been there since 1965, etc.
On a side note, in Virginia, if you own sheep, you can shoot stray dogs on your land with impunity. Growing up on the farm, we had a small pack of outdoor basset hound mixes that kept wandering and going missing. I later learned that a kid I used to ride the school bus with had shot at least twenty of our dogs over the course of a decade. His family owned a few sheep, so there was no legal recourse.
Things get crazy where dogs are concerned.
And I carry my P226 whenever I am on the farm.