We had a neighborhood bully pushed everyone around. We ended up butting heads and I thumped him twice and he steered clear of me and my brothers.
I told my kids growing up, take your part and make them pay a price. If you are ganged up on let them know you will catch each one of them alone and kick their a$$. My oldest son ran into a bully in first grade and he kept telling me about it and I asked have you told your teacher? Yes. Did she stop it? No. Figures, they are are useless. Then the next time you tear into him and make them pull you off of him before you stop hitting him. But I will get in trouble! Yes you will but not at home, I will back you.
He came home a few more days whining around and I finally said, you know what to do, I don’t want to hear about it anymore. The next day he hit back and the bully left him alone for good.
What is funny is he became more sheep dog than sheep at that point. A few years later in a summer camp him and little sister and brother were attending they had a bully who was bothering even tiny kids up to the bigger ones except for my oldest son, they were the same age.
This went on for a week or so and the bully said something to my youngest son, way smaller and younger, didn’t hit him, just said something. My oldest waited for the camp aids to disappear and he caught the bully in the bathroom and administered a stomping to him with the words, you touch another kid, any kid we will do this all summer long and the abuse stopped dead in its tracks! Years later I was talking to a teacher in this camp and my oldest son’s name came up and I mentioned the story and she grinned and said, we wondered what changed with the bully. She just winked and said, he did good! He turned out to be a cop.
I think it is a natural inclination for boys to be sheep dogs instead of sheep, although society is trying very hard to eradicate that impulse in males.