There is NOTHING that we will send to school with Tyler without asking the principal about first. We will also ask for a letter allowing him to carry the item to/from school and on the bus. If it is a problem after that, we will go to the head of transportation and/or the superintendent of schools. NONE of us want to harm the dogs in ANY way, but people's safety comes first. If thank you was the kind of kid to taunt or tease dogs, or to be mean to any animal, we would take a serious look at what he did to provoke the animal. I firmly believe that OFTEN animals attack because people mistreated them and/or provoked them. thank you just isn't that kind of kid. He does tend to lash out if he is scared of an animal but it is done to get the animal to stay away from him. If the animal starts to go away thank you stops immediately. It is just part of who he is. I would worry about pepper spray, ammonia spray or anything similar because it would be easy for other kids to take it and use it. I would actually prefer to have the spray or whatever kept in the office during the school day, as I am sure the school will also. I just worry about him forgetting to pick it up and then not have it when he needs it. So the air horn might be much better.
Fran, an air horn might be the perfect thing. I don't know if it would scare the dogs, but it would be a lot safer in the hands of a child than the other options we have looked at. The whistles that dogs can hear but people cannot are NOT something we will have. While thank you and I cannot "hear" them, they drive us crazy. Wiz got one as a "toy" when thank you was a year old. Every time it was used he would curl up in a ball in tears. If it kept going more than just a couple of seconds, thank you would get sick to his stomach and have a severe headache. Docs wouldn't call it a migraine, but it was a severe headache - but on both sides instead of just one. I get headaches from them also, and I get a strange shivery sort of ache in my bones from them. thank you reacted strong enough that we ended up at an audiologist to be sure it was the whistle and not something far more serious (next stop was an MRI but at his age it would mean anesthesia which we wanted to avoid). Luckily it was the whistle and not something else, though it does put limits on how to get the dogs to leave him alone now.
We live in a rural area, though we are in a small subdivision (roads are shaped like an E, no lot smaller than 3/4 acre, about 40 houses total, very few restrictions/covenants other than county ones). There is no leash law and it is not illegal to let your animal roam anywhere as long as it causes no damage to other's property. As a homeowner, it is fine to defend yourself and your home from ANY animal other than one that is leashed and under the control of its' owner. The animal's owner can TRY to sue you for the cost of the animal (and emotional damages, etc... have been tried), but if the animal isn't on your property you basically have no luck. Juries do NOT find for the owners of the animal.
The deputies will be doing regular drives down our road for a while and if we have to call them out again they will very likely take the dogs and insist that they are destroyed. The enxt time, if there is one, we need to have the deputies take swabs for DNA before we wash the wounds. Otherwise a lawyer can make it sound like we are making it up or some other dog was the biter.
I feel sorry for the dogs. I am pretty sure she has taken her anger out on them. A couple of years ago another neighbor called the cops because she was beating the daylights out of the dog they had then - and making her daughter do it also. Literally ordering the girl (about age 4 or so) to hit the dog harder and even holding the girl's hand and making her hit the dog (the way you would show someone how to hit a baseball, sort of).
We go back to school on Thursday (6th) and will probably take thank you to school and pick him up so that we can talk to the school about this and so he will be safe. Thanks for all the ideas and support. thank you is such a sweet, funny, smart kid. There is no way he provoked the dogs - it just isn't who he is (and I would be the first to call him out if he had provoked them - he would get NO sympathy of ANY kind from us!) and this has set him back a long ways on fear of dogs. He worked so hard to get over his fear of them. He really likes the 3 dogs who live up the street - the owners keep a rawhide or ball outside so he can play fetch with them before the bus comes and on hsi way home. Now he doesn't even want to do that.
Bad pet owners just HOOVER.