It's the same question every dog should ask itself when it chases a car: "What am I going to do with it when I catch it?"

This is one of the BIG issues with domesticating what essentially are working dogs. They are bred to herd, and they are bred to work wide open paddocks. Keeping a dog like that on a suburban block or in a house is against their nature, and in my opinion verges on cruelty.

In fact, if you ride past cattle and sheep farms, as we have often, the working dogs are chained and penned outside. They aren't mollycoddled in any way, even though they are very expensive animals to buy from breeders.

Some riders put great store in saying:

'GET DOWN OFF THERE!!"

I have a 50-50 success ratio.

The worst incident was a small dog that ran out to get me while I was riding up a hill past its house. Unbeknown to it, cars were coming down the hill. It suddenly became very confused when there was a screech of brakes, and fortunately scampered off back to its owner who was witnessing this transgression.

Sometimes the owners can be worse than the dogs. We went past a country house with a dog going ballistic in the front yard. As I am wont to do, I answered back with some barking of my own (note that this was in response to the dog). The owner suddenly appears on the scene and abuses us for upsetting his dog, and then threatened me with physical harm. Luckily we were still moving along quite quickly.

I just don't understand dog owners.

I was on my mountain bike a couple days ago and got off the trail and went down a gravel road by a lake with cottages most of which were closed up.But one had this huge mean looking and barking dog on a chain that looked very rusty not trusty.Well as luck would have the road was a dead end and i had to go back past the beast up hill at this point. I kept saying don't break ....

I used to commute to work, and in a neighborhood I had to go through was a weird sort of intersection with a number of streets coming together. Somebody with a Great Dane moved in facing this intersection, and he immediately decided it was HIS intersection. After my first day, he was waiting for me and would growl and come after me. He didn't look to be playing, and the third day the owner saw it and said nothing. After that the owner would glare at me as if to say, "Say something about it...". A number of days went by with him chasing me a distance down the road.

I started to vary my leaving time to confuse him, but one morning I was late already and it was very foggy. I took a different route to the intersection, to try and get by him. It turned out to be very foggy, and I saw him standing in the middle of the road, facing my normal path and waiting for me. I closed on him quickly and barked loudly at him. He reeled and looked at me and took off running down the road ahead of me. Instead of going away from the road, he kept running down it. It was like a Marmaduke comic, the way he kept running away and looking back. Finally, he missed a fairly sharp turn while looking back and ran off the road into a deep, water filled ditch. I saw him tumble end over end as he went into the water. I stopped to see if he was OK, but as soon as he saw me coming, he bolted away.

The next morning the owner was standing out by the road and it was clear he was waiting for me. I picked up the pace as I went by, and the dog (who had been standing in the street) bolted as soon as he saw me....and almost flattened the owner. The dog never bothered me again, nor did the bad owner.

We had a young black lab join a group trip (very rural farm country). It kept darting between bikes and had us all very much on edge. We had a long gravel section and couldn't drop him. He followed us 8 or 9 miles to the place we stopped for lunch. After lunch we tried to sneak out of that little town before the dog noticed us but he saw and followed again. We were now on pavement so we cranked it up. That dog was amazingly game. It stayed with us for another 5 or 6 miles. For the rest of the day --all the way to the motel-- we kept expecting that dog to show up behind us again. He would have been very far from home when we dropped him.

I was riding towards a farm, when a small but noisy dog rushed out and stood in the middle of the road barking at me. I slowed right down, looked him straight in the eye and produced an imaginary ball from my back pocket, which I "threw" into the farm entrance, and off he went

Don’t know if the incidents that come to mind are “funny” unless you take an ironic sense of satisfaction about karma.

Was carrying some industrial strength ammonia in a water bottle to deter dogs. The ammonia was used to develop a type of blueprint and was quite strong, even after I cut it 50%. Got two dogs. One was a Chihuahua that was approaching at right angles. Got him about a foot before he was under my front wheel. He was pawing (my auto correct wanted to make this “lapwing”) at his eye as I continued on. The other was a young lab, IIRC. Maybe even a Great Dane. Anyway, good size and gangly with long floppy ears. His ears sounded like an Italian helicopter after I sprayed him. You know Italian helicopters: dago wop, wop, wop.

Dogs rarely bite. I think I’ve had only one try in 40 years of riding and a moving ankle is hard to hit. I just slow down because I don't want to wander into oncoming traffic or get knocked down at speed. If they get close enough to bite, I’ve already hit them with a frame pump. Good enough reason to carry one instead of CO2. But it can be expensive replacing Zefal HPXs when you bend them over a nose. Have also used pellet guns. I enjoy the “oh, $hit” look I get when they realized they’ve chased me before and it’s too late to back out. One dog about a quarter mile down the road that always chased me just kept lying in his yard after I popped him a couple times. No interest whatever.

But the most memorable instant was on a country road in central Texas near Austin. Dog comes clear across the opposite lane after me and gets nailed by a an oxidized blue pick-up truck that was about 20 years old. It was instant rigor mortis. I looked back and the dog was lying dead on its side, feet sticking out like somebody had tipped a statue.

Not cycling, but I shared a house with my brother's Basinji. Mean dog that has bit visitors. I've had a few go-arounds with him when I tried to move him of the corner of the couch where he was sleeping. A UPS guy was delivering a package. The dog was approaching the man and I stepped between the dog as I was asked if the dog would bite. I said I didn't trust him as I reached for the collar. We had a real donnybrook as he bit me in the hand several times and I had to kick him off me. I found out that the dog had started chasing cars on the rural road and got run over by the duallies sticking out beyond the fender on a pickup. So sad - not.

A few years ago (+/-45), A medium small dog made a mad dash for me on my bike. He was so intent on sinking his teeth in my leg, he didn't notice the 4 ft deep ditch between us, until he hit the bottom. From my point of view, he just disappeared. The only evidence of his continued existence was lots of yelping.