Originally Posted by
Alsan
Honestly, I'd be interested to know if there is anyone from England here that carries pepper spray with them when they ride. It seems to be pretty popular in the USA from what I've read on this forum.
Maybe you have different dogs in America, perhaps werewolves. It must be something like that because it seems like a crazy thing to do. I wonder where all this fear of and aggression toward dogs comes from.
I've been around dogs my whole life, and not just my own, and I've never had a threatening encounter with one. The only dogs I've ever seen that were a bit aggressive were small enough to be flicked away with one shoe, if they ever decided to do more than make an irritating small dog bark.
At one point, I had a neighbor that was "raising" Pit Bulls as fighting dogs, which is not entirely uncommon over here (unfortunately)... not a far stretch from werewolves in the aggression dept.
Beyond that, I've had dogs chase me and if I bothered to stop, they would usually stop pursuing the moment I stopped being a bike and started being a male human adult with a booming voice yelling "NO!" However, with the haphazard way that many people raise dogs over here, it's not even a slight exaggeration to believe one might attack for no reason what-so-ever. I carry pepper spray, and I'm not what you'd consider a paranoid type. Usually spraying water is sufficient, but you never know. I've been bit by a dog before, granted, I wasn't on a bike at the time.
FWIW, I love dogs. Not a big fan when they chase after me while out on the bike though, and it's quite common.