Free Ranging Dogs and the Cyclist

[JHamelman]

I carried those poppers on my trip last year. The only time I ended up using them was in an Adirondack campground with overly aggressive squirrels. Didn't scare 'em for long! The difficulty I found when testing the poppers is that they need pavement to work, anything "softer" and they don't pop.

Jennifer

[Westinghouse]

I haven't done this myself, so YMMV, but my brother recently completed a transcon carrying a small bunch of "poppers" in the side of his bar bag. Those are the little firecracker type things (also known as bang snaps) that go off when you throw them on the ground. According to him, one of those going off a few feet in front of a dog scares the hell out of the dog and it will make tracks in the opposite direction. Can't say how well they would work on those Eastern European mongrels.

Those psychotic, blood-thirsty monsters I ran into in Czech were the only two like that. I cycled France, Germany, Czech, Poland, Ukraine, Moldavia, parts of Romania and Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, and from New York City to south Florida. Only those two dogs were like that. It is just that the absolute ferocious vicious nature of their sounds and attack were like nothing I had ever seen or heard. It made a lasting impression.

[steveherrmann]

Wild dogs??? I have lived in Budapest for 20 years and never heard or experienced wild dogs. Not in Hungary, Austria, Slovakia,... It sounds like an urban legend to me, or a one-time event that has been over-blown.

Regarding safety from dogs. I have found a half-full water bottle to be amply good deterent. A quick flick of the wrist to make the water fly to the nozzel end, followed by a fast, solid squeeze and a steam of water can be easily aimed at the dog's face, which disorients them long enough to get out of range.

[David W Pratt]

My experience is slightly different.  Between my increasing decrepitude, and the hills here in Vermont, I perform a social service for the dogs of a certain age.  When they see me, they can lever themselves up off the porch and amble down to the property line and easily keep up with me as they bark to signal that I'm not wanted and I'd better not let the sun set on me there.

[John Nettles]

While this post is over 2 years old, I have a good sense of whether a dog is just barking to say "Hey, this is my territory.  Go away!" or "Hey, I am gonna eat your ass!"  Rarely is the latter thankfully.  The former usually has its tail wagging as it "bounds" but the latter is usually quiet, running all out towards you (no extra energy spent with the tail or bounding).  The worst is when you hear just a clicking sound and down to see a dog trying to bite you (it is the toe nails clicking).

That said, a water bottle is a pretty good deterrent but I also carry Halt! dog repellent which works great.  Just be sure to spray in downwind of you.

[hikerjer]

Just a comment. The most uiversal command dogs understand is "no",  atleast in English speaking countries.  I've found that shouting it quite loudly nearly always deters a dog. Nearly, of course, being a relative term.

[hikerjer]

"my increasing decrepitude: --  Great terminology.  Unfortunatley, I can easliy relate to it.

[Rixtoy]

On my Bike Across Kansas in 2019 I camped next to an 80 yr old guy who had ridden across the country several times. I mentioned the Southern Tier and he said the dogs on that route are the worst. He has tried a lot of solutions and says the best by far is a marine compressed air horn - those dogs have never heard anything like that. You can get them at any Walmart and they last forever. He had a nice leather holster made that suspends from his handle bars.

I am considering the Southern Tier and that seems like a good solution.

[jamawani]

As the deputy sheriff way down south in Alabama told me
after I had dealt with dozens of mongrels in the countryside for days - -
"Jus' shoot 'em."

[misterflask]

After a couple weeks on the TA I wished I had pepper spray.  But it seemed the dogs had seen enough of it that just pretending you were going to spray them would stop them in their tracks.

Did anyone else deal with that pack of six dogs in a western Kansas town that would surround your bike while two of them snapped at your ankles?  They seemed to have it all worked out and thought it quite the lark.

I like 'bad dog'.  They know they don't have to respond to your opinions but they have to think on it for a second.

[Pat Lamb]

I did have pepper spray on the TransAm, but most of the bad dogs had learned how far the spray would reach.  It was pretty annoying after a while.  The curs would stay 6'3" away, circling almost like a halo 3" beyond the 6' the spray could reach.  As soon as I started to remount, they'd charge again.

I missed the Kansas pack, but outran the Kentucky pack -- 8 hounds from 5 houses.  Give a loaded tourist a 20 mph head start going downhill -- remembering outrunning them still makes me smile!

Widespread leash laws have reduced the number of wild dog packs in the last 30 years in most places, thank goodness.

[froze]

That was a very good write-up you did, it reflects my experiences as well.  The only thing I haven't done yet is to get some spray.  But I have had to use my Zefal HPX frame pump as a billy club on two different dogs, I gave them a whack on the nose, and off they went screaming; I had one of the dog owners yell at me for hitting his dog, and I yelled back and said the next time that dog comes after me I'll kill it, keep it tied in your damn yard as the law requires! The owner didn't say anything after that!

But I need to look into some spray, but I hate carrying around more stuff.  99 times out of 100 a drill sergeant type of yell commanding the dog to stay or go home usually does it.  Most of them will just want to play with you, but there are some that have much worst ambitions.  It is also against the law for a dog not to be tied up in their yard, so if a dog is aggressive and you have to ride by that area a lot a call to the police will settle everything for that person and their dog.  Not sure why people that live in the country let their dogs run loose in their yards, they know it's illegal, but they don't realize that if that dog hurts you by either biting you or making you crash they're going to have a liability issue.

[Westinghouse]

Dogs are the product of hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions of years of evolution. Until only recently in that span of time they had to run in packs, hunt and run down prey and eat them. The impulses are hard wired into the DNA and born in the blood. It is the sudden appearance of the cyclist and the movement and sound that stimulates the impulses. Also the novelty of it. I noticed this in some countrified areas. Herds of cattle would stand calmly near fence lines eating grass as cars and trucks tore by thirty feet away. When I came along they would bolt and run far off into the distance. They were used to the vehicles but not used to a person on a bicycle. I probably appeared to them as an approaching predator or something that posed a threat. They were not used to it.

[froze]

I've ridden by many herds of cattle, horses, a few penned up buffalo, goats, sheep, and Llamas and none of them ever chased me or ran away as I went by, they just look at me.  I had a horse once try to play with me, it first whinnied at me then it ran a bit behind me (behind a fence) and then ran a bit ahead of me, then ran behind me and then ahead again, kept doing that on a massive ranch spread for about a 1/2 mile.  When I got to the end of the fence it just stopped and watched me ride off shaking its head and whinnied.

[Westinghouse]

To me the worst dog is the one who is quiet, doesn't breathe heavy, and all you here is the clicking of the toe nails as you look down and see a big dog only a few feet behind you.  Usually scares the bejeebees out of me.

They say the same about people. It is always the quiet ones.