Man pulled a gun on me and my dog. How to be better prepared?

Basically to give an overview of the situation, I was at my Fiancé’s grandmother’s house and had put a 30 foot in ground lead in a place where my dog (Rottweiler) could get some shade. This was, unbeknownst to me, slightly on the neighbor’s property when the lead was fully extended. Even at this, my dog was still 15-20 yards from the person’s house and where he was. I went inside for roughly 5 minutes and went back outside to check on him and found the neighbor coming out of the house with his wife. He was holding a gun and said “I’m gonna shoot your f*** dog. He’s been barking and growling at me for 15 minutes” (factually incorrect- we were only there for 10 minutes total at that point). I tried to show him that he was on a lead and he kept saying he didn’t care and that he was going to shoot him. I was confused, as no one had asked me to move him or anything. He kept screaming and cursing at me on his porch, all the while muzzle flashing me multiple times. I removed the dog and went and got my fiancé’s dad, who was more familiar with the neighbors than I, and we both went back outside. At that point the old man put the gun in his pocket and continued to curse and scream. He then stepped off his porch and charged towards us and stuck his hand back in his pocket like he was about to pull the gun back out. Luckily he didn’t and it was just a lot of bravado, getting in faces, talking stuff. Eventually it fizzled out and the situation ended. This man apparently has a history of doing this sort of random aggression. There have never been any issues with neighbors or neighbor’s animals before. Aside from avoiding him, what can I do to be better prepared in the future? In hindsight, I can recognize multiple things in the situation:

1. It is my responsibility to put the dog on property that he is allowed to be on. I accept that I made that mistake and was in the wrong. Regardless of whether I didn’t know it was his property or not.

2. I contributed to the argument and bravado by standing my ground, which further escalated the situation. No threats were made on my part, but I did say things like “F you old man,” and “You are such an f’n liar. You immediately threatened to shoot instead of asking or talking to me.” I understand my own fault in that.

3. I usually carry a gun in my car, but never really on my person.

4. I stayed on my fiancé’s grandmother’s property the entire time, even when the man charged towards us and he ended up on her property.

5. I can completely understand if my dog was off lead, growling, charged him, or attacked him or something. I would be heartbroken, but I completely understand that he’s a big dog and that the man had every right to defend himself, but he continued to be aggressive and have the gun out, waving it around even after I showed him that my dog was no threat.

Submitted July 06, 2025 at 07:31AM by CTay2 https://ift.tt/I8gs4OW