Who is at fault? Dog attacks my dog. (insurance, house)

[footguy]

My inlaws were out walking my dog who is off-leash. They are on the street when a lady pulls into her driveway, gets out of her car and starts talking to my inlaws about our very beautiful dog. As they are chatting her husband opens the front door to the house, at which point she quickly turns around and yells for him not to let the dog out. As she turns towards the house to intercept her dog who is running out of the house, our dog follows her a couple of steps onto her property (driveway). The dogs sniff each other and then her dog inexplicably attacks my dog tearing his ear and gauging his head.
Now the owner has a beware of dog sign on the lawn, which tells me that her dog is aggressive (although she never mentions this to my inlaws), and in my opinion, even if my dog was on a leash and a couple of steps back on the road, the other dog would have come out on the street and attacked our dog anyways. The reason she yelled at her husband to not allow the dog out was b/c she knows it is aggressive and she is hanging with a different dog.
Who is in the right?
Do I always have to have a dog on leash, even if the other dog probably would have attacked anyways?

What should I do, if anything at all. Or is it our fault and I should go apologize?

[Iwillthink4u]

i think the only fair thing to do is to force their dog to sit while 'your' dog attacks it and tares its ear off.
or am i being unreasonable?
:-D

[footguy]

hehe, thanks
great idea!

[stone-ground]

Hey footguy, sorry about your dog .. hope he's ok.

Each municipality have their own sets of bi-laws .. I think, so they may vary.
But pretty much everywhere, unless at a 'dog-park', dogs are supposed to be on leashes.

Unfortunately, the other dog attacked your dog on their property, so would think they're off the hook for paying the vet bills, unless they volunteer to help out.

If it had attacked your dog off their property, you could register a complaint at the local police station.

Years ago while walking my dog (off leash) on the road, met up with a woman walking her dog on leash. Her dog look crazed and I gave her as much space as I could. Her shepherd struggled to get free and eventually broke his collar and ran back and viciously attacked my dog, half his size. He managed to get free a few times, and then caught and mauled again and again, eventually finding shelter under someone's car.

By this time the woman is almost a block away yelling for her dog. Mine was in a state of shock with a couple of huge gaping holes, so had to get him to a vet straight away. While he was in surgery, went across the street and registered a complaint at the police station, even though I hadn't any info on the dog owner, dog, etc.

Took six weeks before I finally found out who she was. When I mentioned the vet bills, she said they had insurance for that sort of thing, but seeing as how there had been a bunch of recent claims, the limit had probably run out .. plus the fact that it was 'so long ago'.

Mentioned that I'd registered a complaint with the police .. and long and short of it all .. she paid the vet bills.

At that time, the police advised they could do nothing about a vicious dog attack until they had two registered complaints against that particular dog.

If you are afraid it could happen again, even off their property, you could register the complaint, just so it's on record. Then if it did happen again, you may have some recourse ..

Do they have a fence around the yard? If they have a Beware of Dog sign posted, you'd think they'd have a big fence for containment ..