Neighbors Dog Biting Through Fence

Location: Texas

To be clear, I am not seeking any type of monetary compensation from this. Just to start the post with that info.

My neighbors have a chihuahua mix that is fairly aggressive. He’s been rushing the fence and growling, barking, and snapping anytime we’re outside with our dog (a mini schnauzer) or my kids are outside (my youngest is 2). The owners leave this dog and their other one outside without supervision for hours. It’s been a couple of months of this now, and it’s to the point that I don’t feel comfortable letting my children outside in our own backyard until I know their dogs aren’t.

We have a privacy screen on our fence (the fence itself is welded pipe with that square wire fencing. I have no idea if this matters but we bought and paid for the fence before anyone bought the house next door), but apparently it leaves just enough room for this small dog to poke his head under.

I was outside fixing the zip ties that were snapped off in a bad wind storm and their dog rushed the fence like usual. I yelled at it to get away. It went away for a couple of minutes and then when I was working on putting one of the zip ties through the grommet of the screen on the top part of the fence, it stuck its head through the bottom and bit my shoe. Thankfully, I was wearing my crocs and not my slides that I usually wear for housework, so it wasn’t able to bite my actual foot. There is a clear bite mark on my shoe.

I attempted to call animal control, but it appears that (according to the sheriffs office) our police department is closing at 2pm the next couple of weeks (they did not say why and yeah, it is weird but small town America I guess? But this happened at like 2:30pm). She forwarded me to the animal controls voicemail but I won’t hear anything back until tomorrow.

My main concern is, now that I know this dog will absolutely bite and does stick its head through the fence, that one of my children will get too curious (because again, one of them is two years old) and get bit. Again, I don’t want money. I just want the dog gone. Is this a realistic outcome? Would I have to ask for charges to be pressed for that outcome? Would charges even be able to be pressed since the dog didn’t break skin?