An Example Of Handling Dogs When Cycling

I completely forgot to share this video the other day. It’s not actually a great example but it’s an example of handling dogs when cycling and probably the only one I’d manage to get on camera.

We were cycling along the road when these three dogs saw us coming and started barking. They were very non-threatening and we could’ve easily just cycled past them.But dogs can be fairly unpredictable and with varying levels of aggression. I caught Stew just after he dismounted and as you can see, as soon as he even starts dismounting the dog, that was previously all bark, starts retreating.

99% of dogs are like this. There’s no need to throw anything at barking dogs, they’re mostly wimps!The moment you take your foot off the pedal, they back off.

What’s questionable is how thick they are which will impact how close they’re willing to get to a moving bicycle – you could hit one and take a tumble! What’s also questionable is how much land they perceive to be “theirs”.

The thing with dogs is they tend to protect an area: their home. For most dogs this is no more than a few metres, but some might protect a stretch of road in which case dismounting might be better incase you can’t peddle away fast enough before they’re yapping at your ankles or under the wheels I thought I’d share this even though it’s not the whole scenario (and we could’ve definitely just biked past) because I was terrified of dogs when we left on phase 1 of the trip.

It was the 1 thing I was actually frightened off. I wasn’t bothered about people really – just the dogs! So, yeah, if you are like me, this is what nearly all dog on the road are like: a bark much worse than their bite! I actually wrote a full post about it and it’s quite popular on our website! I saw it was shared on Reddit once too 😅

How to handle stray dogs when cycling

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