Property and dog question?

So my parents and I were victims of the May 22nd tornado that went through Joplin, Missouri, and we lost our home. A couple weeks ago or so we moved into a new home and have a pleasant old couple living next door to us. Here’s the problem: they have 3 dogs just like us. We don’t have a fenced back yard (yet) and can’t fence it until landscaping is finished which we hope will take less than a month or two.

Doesn’t sound like a problem right?  Just put your dogs on a leash and it’s taken care of. But no. When we go to take any number of them out, the neighbor’s dogs come running onto our property and right up to us and our dogs. Now, we do not own violent dogs. In fact, they are friendly as could be, but they aren’t used to new dogs. They are nervous, curious, and defensive.

In the first 3 days we lived here, we had 1 of our English bull terriers outside and 1 of their dogs (the only little yapper dog) came running into our front yard and started biting our 60lb bull terrier. Of course, we just pulled ours inside. But that’s just not right. Sure, it would be great if they just all got along, but they don’t. They’re dogs, and if mine doesn’t like theirs than there’s not much we can do in the short term.

We went over there and introduced ourselves and had an excellent, ‘getting to know each other’ experience. They are wonderful people. But they just disregarded our comments in regards to each others dogs and nothing has changed in the two following weeks.

What rights do we have?  It’s became such a frustrating hassle that we’ve been tempted to allow a little more slack on our dogs leash to allow them to defend our property. We’re animal lovers and don’t want anyone’s pets hurt, but their dogs just run into our yard no matter what. It’s becoming a nightmare.

What legal/informal advice might you have to help alleviate this problem for now until we get our yard fixed and a fence built?