I grew up with dogs and learned from a very early age, delivering newspapers from my Stingray, that stopping my bike and confronting the dog and not backing down was better than trying to outrun the dog. Outrunning a dog on my Stingray wasn't an easy thing to do with 15 lbs of newspapers slung in my newspaper carriers bag. Plus it didn't stop them from giving chase.

After a few curb chases and confrontations, one day, he heard me coming from the sound of the previous house's tossed newspaper, "trotted" out and stopped at the curb. I stopped my bike and he just looked at me. I was thinking, "Ok buddy, I'm not backin' down". After that he would just sit up on the porch and watch me pass.

What's really funny is when I gave up that paper route, a friend from school got that same route and asked me in class one day (yep, you guessed it), "Did you have a big dog chase you from a house on Arlington Street?" Hahaha.....