My son descended on us today and we didn't get a chance to talk to the neighbor, but the dad just called us on the phone. DH's voice and manner was very quiet and calm (infuriatingly so...he is so good at that, darn it).
The jist of it went something like,
N'bor: I hear xxx was up at your house a couple days ago.
DH: yes, he was.
N'bor: Did he hurt anything?
DH: No, we had just put the birds away. We closed him on the deck so he couldn't get to the chickens. He was up there barking at us and we called your house to get your son to come get him.
N'bor: My son says you said you were going to shoot him.
DH: Here is exactly what I said

then DH proceeds to recount the event just as I told you in the first post)
When he got to the part of telling him that his son said that if we shot his dog, he'd bring a shotgun up here and kill every one of the birds, N'bor said, "I'd do the very same thing".
He isn't horrified in the least that his kid made the threat of gun violence, not at all. That tells me exactly where the kid gets it, sadly. Astounding. Just astounding.
DH said every other sentence was "Please don't kill my dog, he's my best friend, please don't kill my dog". DH kept saying, I don't
want to kill your dog, I really don't, but if he comes up here and attacks my chickens, I'm going to defend them".
N'bor: well, if he killed a chicken, I'd pay for it. (yeah, sure. Some are rare, endangered breeds and some are older than his dog, too. All are pets)
It went on and on with my DH just listening, for ages it seemed. I was wondering why he didn't say anything about our legal rights to kill the dog, his son's possible incarceration for carrying out a threat of slaughtering my chickens. DH said, with his frame of mind, I was not going to inflame the situation, but it made it clear the course of action we will take if we have to use deadly force.
On a positive note, the dog is being kept in the house until mid week and the son has instructions to walk him on a leash a couple times a day. He admitted that the dog sails right threw the invisible fence and yelps a little, but it won't keep him in, so he is having a chainlink fence installed (complained that he really couldn't afford it, like it was our fault he was having to spend the money).
My first thought was good, but then, what if the dog is a digger or climber, not being used to being contained? I don't consider the matter resolved, not with his attitude.