At what point do you worry about driving people away?

Perhaps remove a section of the brain labotomy style. I can't imagine a headless dog being too much of a threat seeing as a dog uses his nose, as it were. A headless dog has no teeth, no bark, no bite. I certainly wouldn't be afraid of a headless dog. A dog with part of his brain missing snarling and growling bearing his teeth - sure. That's a story.

I don't think it is possible to write in a genre like Horror and not drive some people away. If a certain character ends up dead or imprisoned or attacked, somebody is always going to find a way to consider your book offensive simply because that particular character was chosen for the given unpleasant fate. if the scene is considered too graphic, it will be considered amoral and if it is not graphic enough, someone will complain that you are being too sensitive in not giving us the details, And so on and so forth.

To say nothing of the fact that Horror to begin with is something that innately drives away some literature fans simply because they consider Horror to be a celebration of other people's terror, pain and suffering and therefore partaking in it at all is gonna drive them away.

It seems like trying to avoid driving people away sooner or later becomes totally unproductive, especially in a genre this controversial.