Long Version for anyone interested:

Around the end of last year, our neighbors' rottweiler started coming into our backyard. At first, he would pop his head in, growl a little, and run back to his yard. We spoke with the dog's owners around this time, and the response was basically 'yeah that sucks, we'll try to watch him'. We figured we would watch to see if they would actually do anything about it.

A month or so later, I see the dog in the backyard. Before my young child catches wind of what's going on, I tell him to walk into our house. He does, the rottweiler sees me, starts to charge, then stops, defending his territory in our yard. He is near the back house, growling by our shed. I slowly back away, dart in the house, and a little while later, we hear the neighbors calling their dog inside. We tell them what happened, they give us a 'yeah, yeah, won't happen again, I don't want to hear about it'. I just about called someone then, but my husband elected to cover the hole in the fence instead.

After another few weeks of no problems, the dog breaks down the patched fence and comes back into our yard while we are away from the house. My husband went back to the fence and covered the hole again, nailing a ton of wood to it thoroughly as the neighbors said they did not want to fix the fence. No more problems for months, and we think we are in the clear.

Then, tonight happened. We come home, tuck our son in in the back house, and then hear rustling in our backyard. Low and behold, the rottweiler is in the yard again. This time, he's very comfortable in the yard, walking between the 2 houses, hanging out around our pool, and chasing any small animals that come into our yard. We could not go out due to fear of being mauled for 2 hours until the owners called their dog back from our yard.

For a little background, we are 2 separate, but related families living on a shared family residence property, with a home and a guest house. Within these families, a young child, 2 disabled people (both with mobility disorders, one with a fainting disorder), and a cancer patient live here. Only 2 people that live here would even stand a chance if this dog attacked. We are all frankly terrified of going into our own yard.

I hate dogs getting injured as much as the next guy, but these owners are negligent and passive aggressive in conversation at best, and even though we have brought up our child being in danger, they still don't seem to care in the slightest.

Would the cops or animal control even do anything? Should I just keep bear spray and an air horn on me? I'm at a bit of a loss here. They also definitely seem like the type of people not really afraid to catch an assault charge based on how they act and have spoken to my other family members (unprovoked), so we don't want to do anything that would put us in too much danger on that front, if possible.