Neighbors Dog Tried To Attack My Baby On My Property

Neighbors dog tried to attack my baby on my property

I live in Mississippi, in what is considered a neighborhood (has leash laws). My neighbors dog is usually kept on a chain in their backyard or inside their house. They occasionally let the dog out (off leash) to pee. If we are outside when this happens or go outside while they are outside with the dog, it will run onto our property barking and growing and on several occasions has gotten very close to biting me before I ran back into the house. The neighbors are always outside when this happens and yell for the dog to stop but the dog does not listen. This has happened about 4-5 times now.

Last week I was on my porch with my 1 year old. I sat him down on the porch and let him play with the grass while I stood by him. A second later I hear my neighbor yell “NO!” “STOP” and I look over to see their very large blue tick hound BOLTING after my crawling baby. I snatch my baby up and run into my house, the dog made it all the way to the door before I slammed it in its face. The neighbor came and apologized after, I told her it wasn’t ok and that the dog could’ve killed my son and that she needs to give the dog away because she clearly can’t control it. She agreed. Later that night my husband was furious about the situation (especially after seeing the ring footage of it) and asked to talk to the neighbor. He demanded to know what she was going to do to fix the situation, and she stated it’s out of her hands and that there’s nothing she can do it’s her sons dog…her son then came outside (he is in his 20s, it’s “his” dog) and said the dog would never do that (even tho the mom saw it and it was on video and it’s happened MULTIPLE times while he was outside). My husband and him got into a verbal altercation. It ended with my husband telling him that the next time the dog came onto our property that he would kill it. The neighbor stated that if he killed his dog that he would kill him. My husband said if you threaten me again I will call the police, and we went inside. (I have the altercation on video) Later the police showed up at our door and informed us that the neighbor called them and that it is “assault” to threaten to kill the mans dog. But that he wasn’t going to write a report but that they could possibly press charges later if they wanted.

I live in fear that every time I go outside to put my baby in my car that we could possibly be attacked by this animal, I can’t take him outside anymore to swing in his swing… and now I have to worry that my husband could go to jail….do we have any options to press charges on them? Or sue or anything so that we can ensure that we will be safe from this animal. I already called the police to report the dog trying to attack my baby and showed the police the video. But all that happened was the officer warned them.. I’m at a loss.