Stupid dog wrecked me.

[Dolamite02]

I agree with calamari. Eye contact is vital when trying to train or control a dog. Look them straight in the eyes and they'll know you aren't backing down.

Ah- I didn't understand the purpose in taking off the glasses, unless the result was going to be something like this

[RT]

Unfortunately, after the chase has begun I do not have the time to make eye contact to train or control the strange dog. Eye contact has only worsened the situation in each of my experiences. For those of you who are dog owners, perhaps this is natural. I am not a dog owner, so my only interest is in either outrunning or disabling the dog with a water bottle or whatever animal repellant I have on my person.

I hate these threads, because those of us who did not major in Canine Psychology always end up looking like dog-haters.

[sevenmag]

How was the dog?

I think the dog is going to be fine. At least he looked ok when he was leaving the scene of the accident. I do hope he is anyway, but at the same time I hope he's at least as sore as I am today.

The fake right then dodge left idea sounds like a good one actually if I can think about it when the time comes. I honestly hope I never need to though.

[DropDeadFred]

I beleive in this instance it would be called a "mastiff hop"

touche'

[banerjek]

On my usual route this afternoon and what looked like a Mastiff was laying along the edge of road. I get all the way to opposite side of and pick up the speed some hoping that he'll ignore me or at least I'll be fast enough to just blow by. When I got close to him he launched and somehow got directly in front of me and seemed to stop. It's hard to say really other than I wound up T-boning him at 20+.

Dude, you screwed up.

When approaching animals, especially dogs, you need to ease up on the speed rather than drop the hammer. Animals are unpredictable and will jump right in front of you. But if you increase speed, change anything, or do anything to raise the level of tension, you'll drastically increase the chances of provoking a chase or even a confrontation. This is particularly true when the dog is in front of rather than behind you.

The best way to get by dogs is to make things as boring as possible. Drop the cadence or even coast while not looking at them (but always pay attention). If they keep coming, drop the speed even more and be as emotionally neutral as possible. If you act like a sрaz, you'll just make them wilder. Even if you need to assert your authority, you'll do way better if you're calm internally.

Drag racing dogs only works when they're mostly behind you. While it can be fun, I generally recommend against it as it trains them to chase cyclists. Most dogs (including the ones making a lot of racket right by you) are just excited and won't hurt you if you don't crash into them or escalate the situation.

A few dogs will assume you're out to harm their owner half the time, that's why they're chasing you, they are chasing you off in their minds. The vast majority of dogs (99%) are chasing you because that's fun, they really don't want to catch you. VERY few dogs will catch you and actually bite you, and you can ward off some of those by exhibiting anger and outrage at the animal instead of fear. I've done this many times over 20+ years of daily road cycling. I have a large dog now, I trained him, I learned quite a bit about dog psychology through all this. Dogs are pack animals, it's 99% about letting the friggin dog know who's boss, very few dogs will permeate that, but they smell fear and that's the kiss of death with the rare truly aggressive dog (there aren't really too many).

This more or less covers it, except you can't possibly be referring to Sam?