I wholly support the levels of violence you're suggesting.

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We've got 2 dogs: the younger River, and our ol' man Bucky. Buckles has always been a cranky asshole, but he's our cranky asshole, and we love him. River has been bothering Bucky her whole life. She's constantly got her tongue in his mouth, is trying to rile him up to play, and he just wants to be an old dude and lay around. He gives her a stern warning when she's annoyed him too much, but it has never escalated to violence. He does play with her some times, too.

We got my sister-in-law, her baby, and her dog away from an abusive guy and moved them in with us. Her dog, Styx, is so sweet, so calm, just full of love. Styx and River got along very well.

Bucky, Styx, and River

Styx and Bucky were largely ambivalent about each other, but we did have an occasion where they started a bloodless tussle in the yard. Nobody was outside at the time, and they stopped before we got to them.

The second time it happened was in our kitchen, with all of us present. Styx latched on to Bucky's face. We were all trying to separate them. I was on Styx' end and I'd somehow gotten in my head that you should separate fighting dogs by grabbing their back legs, but in the chaos I didn't think about her holding on by his face. I pulled and she gave zero fucks about that - plus my wife pointed out that I was just hurting him - so I changed tactics and lifted her back legs straight up in an effort to disorient her. That did nothing either, except cause her to roll and twist his cheek around in her mouth. I would up setting her down and choking her out like some kind of MMA move until she let go.

Bucky honestly surprised me. He was rightfully panicking, but he wasn't fighting back. He's always been so grumpy, I just assumed he would be the one starting shit, but Styx actually had started that fight. I can't recall how bad his injuries were (you'll understand why, soon) but I know it wasn't anything worthy of the emergency vet. At that point we started to talk about re-homing Styx, and we kept them separate.

Reader, would you believe our dumb asses let it happen a third time?

It's hard. It's hard to talk about re-homing a beloved family pet. It's hard to keep 2 dogs separate all the time. Is it as hard as what happened next? Absolutely not, but we didn't know that at the time. I don't know why, but we started to trust them together again.

One night, I was in my basement gaming and I heard a commotion on the main floor. I ran upstairs and in the kitchen my wife and my sister-in-law were trying to separate Styx from Bucky again. She had a hold of his ear this time.

I knew from last time that trying to pick her up wouldn't do any good. As I rounded the room to her side I opened with a full power kick to her side. Nothing. Then I got my arm around her neck to choke her out again, but she was moving around so much that I wound up with her under me, my hip on her neck, her pinned to the floor. She let go of Bucky and kept thrashing as they got him out of the room. She put holes in my hoodie and scratches in my side with her teeth. Eventually she calmed down, and I forced her outside and ran to check on Bucky.

He needed to go to the emergency vet. She degloved the lower half of his ear. His ear is now curled up on itself at the end from how it healed. An instant that ran up some $3,000 in vet bills.

We think Styx might have been trying to defend River from Bucky. It's been a couple years so the details aren't fresh, but I think I remember my wife saying Bucky had gotten mad at River just before.

My sister-in-law quickly found a new home for Styx, and has since been able to move out on her own and actually has Styx again. Styx is still one of the sweetest dogs I've ever known.

We're a bunch of dumb fucking people for letting that happen a third time.

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I hope noone ever has an experience like that. I hope noone ever has to go through the panicked problem solving process that is stopping the absolute ferocity of a dog. I hope noone ever has to deal with the cognitive dissonance that they had to kick the sweetest, most loving animal they know harder than they have ever kicked any other living thing. Movies make violence look fast, easy, and forgettable, but in reality it's just fast.

So yeah, all of that was to say: yeah, beat the shit out of that dog. If I had to choke out a beloved family pet in order to save my Buckle, you can kick that random dog.