Animal Nuissance

Since my husband and I have been together, we dreamed of living in the country.  We love the privacy and freedom that we have.  Our entire marriage has been living in apartments which of course everyone knows your business.  We lived in subdivisions which you are limited to how many cars you can have in the driveway, what kinds of trees and shrubs you can plant and forget about owning a boat or RV because they have to be store elsewhere which costs money.  I guess what I am getting at is that no matter where you live there are downsides.  I absolutely love living in the country with our small 8 acre plot of land and our 1800 sq. ft. home but with open land you get unwanted guests.  I know that I invite them but I can't stand to throw my left overs in the trash so I dump them on the edge of the woods for the animals to eat.  Occasionally I get dogs that wonder from our neighbors property.  I don't mind most of the dogs that come onto my property, it is the dogs that come onto my property and terrorize my dog and bark constantly.  I hate to be mean to animals but I can't let my dog out without her being harassed by these dogs.  They are those small irritating dogs that have a tendency to bark without reason.  These dogs were running off the birds, deer and turkey that roam through my property so I had to take action.  My son has several airsoft guns so after about half an hour of trying to figure out how to load the stinking gun, I figured it out and proceeded outside to shoot the pesky little buggers.  They of course were then scared of me walking out there as opposed just yelling at them from the door.  They continued to growl and bark at me but once I popped one of them in the butt with the airsoft gun they quickly ran.  They ran alright! They ran about five feet until they realized that it didn't hurt all that much and I kept missing them with all other shots I let out.  So, I ran at them like a crazy woman still cocking and shooting the gun which made me look like the crazy old lady screaming and yelling for no reason in her pajamas.  

I am not an animal hater nor do I randomly shoot at dogs just because they are on my property but when they are scaring off the wildlife and harassing my dog, then I have to take action.  I cannot and will not shoot to kill an animal (unless my life or the lives of my children are threatened), I just want to stun them enough to scare them.  I feel bad about being mean to the cute little dogs but I just can't have that around my baby nor will I have my own dog being harassed in her own yard.  I actually have some dogs that come to me and love to be pet and my husband and son also give love to most of the dogs that come around.  Some of them are to much of the free spirit and they are skittish so we don't bother them and they don't bother us.