This adorable goofball follows me most mornings while walking my dog. The following me is not the issue, he is a mischievous jerk. There are a number of homes on our walk that have multiple unsecured dogs. They want to fight with him and he tries to play. He also walks in the road crossing whenever he feels like it.

But the worst issue is last week we saw there were chickens in a yard, and he went after them. I do not think he killed one, but I saw feathers flying for sure.

his story

I have named him Astro Jr, as he is the pup of one of my friend's son's dog. Someone in the neighborhood outside my (I have to walk through their neighborhood to get out of mine) adopted him. The owner never kept him in their house, or even yard. Astro jr has allegations of cat killings against him. The owner's solution was to remove Astro jr's collar and disavow ever having owned him. So he lives in the area of his old home, but currently has no owner.

There are a number of loose cats on our walk and he has never laid them any attention. Not saying that absolves him of the allegations.

Tl;dr he has no owner, but lives near my neighborhood. Animal control has been unable to catch him, so they stopped trying and ignore calls regarding him.

The last couple days I have tried to put a harness on him, he ran from that. Then I almost got a leash on him lasso style, again he ran.

I have tried squirting him with a water bottle, shooing him.

I am worried someone is going to assume he is mine and retaliate against me and my dog. Or he is going to hurt another animal, or he himself get hurt.

My dog on our walk. She is recovering from knee surgery.

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[–] 19 points 3 weeks ago

If you want him to stop following you. Your best bet is to ignore him. The more you interact with him the more he's going to assume you're playing with him. If you're worried that people might make wrong assumptions about you being the owner, start wearing headphones during your walk, body language in general can be quite helpful.

If you're trying to leash him, a pole snare for dog catching would be a good investment. Might need some practice and you might need someone else to help too.

There are also sedatives that are relatively safe that you can use to lace his food with although you'd have to be careful that the wrong animal doesn't eat it and I doubt you'd be able to get a vet to prescribe you any of those drugs without first having examined the animal.

Honestly, I'm more surprised that animal control hasn't been able to catch him because really this isn't your responsibility.

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