Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
Interesting article though the reporter hasn't watched as much Dog Whisperer as necessary. Cesar Millan deals with "aggressive" breeds all the time...even for small dogs he recommends "No touch, No Talk, No eye contact" when meeting them until the dog is in a calm-submissive state (which many ill-raised dogs never get to with guests). One has to read the dog's body language & resist the urge to greet it as with a human. Took my dog for a walk in the woods last weekend & some idiots had their young pit bull running ahead off-leash. The clowns asked me if MY dog was friendly & a moment later their dog started growling/lunging/biting...my dog jumped into the creek to get away & the bozos (Cesar would call this weak energy) told their pit bull pup that "It's not good to play on the rocks"! Heh, the point is that Americans have an epidemic of unbalanced aggressive dogs--IMHO because they passive-aggresively use dogs to express their own personality.
So Lemond might be using his dog as a form of resentment. Lawsuits...common in business. Wouldn't call LeMond a "nut" but obviously issues there. Oh well, he won TDF back when Americans thought it impossible to defeat the mighty Europeans. I still have the special "Winning" magazine TDF issues with Greg on the cover. OTOH in re the Hinault issue, Jonathan Boyer (another American pioneer) was angry at LeMond after Greg chased him down in the end of (IIRC) '83 Worlds.
There's a simpler explanation---the reporter might be one of those people who are afraid of dogs. There's a nut in my neighborhood who walks around with a stick and brandishes it at any dog he sees, even one walking on a leash with its owner. He shook it at my dog one day when the pooch was sitting quietly on his hindquarters, in the yard (which he was trained to not leave), with me standing right next to him, screaming "keep that mutt in the house when I'm walking". I told him that if he ever threatened my dog again, that stick would serve as a suppository. He decided that the next block was a better route for his daily walks from then on.