Annoying Beagle encounter

[divingbiker]

Good Work Lisa, that dog will think twice the next time he sees a bicyclist!

As the owner of two cocker spaniels who HATE bicycles, I doubt that this is true. I have tried for 10 years to sensitize my dogs to bikes, they see me riding mine every day, and still every time we encounter one while out for a walk they freak out. It's quite embarrassing, but I've resigned myself to their bad behavior and I just control them as best I can. Of course, they're never off leash so they're literally "all bark, no bite."

[li10up]

It's quite embarrassing, but I've resigned myself to their bad behavior and I just control them as best I can. Of course, they're never off leash so they're literally "all bark, no bite."

As dog owners we should never resign ourselves to their bad behavior. ALL dogs can be trained...but usually it is the owner that needs the training first in how to train the dog. If I may offer a bit of advice...you must correct the dog's behavior BEFORE the outburst happens. You can see when a dog becomes fixated on something. That's when the correction is needed. A pull of the leash and a verbal correction at that point, done on a CONSISTANT basis, will correct the dog's behavior. Please don't give up. The people they are "attacking" don't know the dogs are "all bark, no bite." I think all dog owners should watch the TV show "Dog Whisper." Cesar Millan is amazing! He really KNOWS dogs! You'll learn a lot from that show. I'm in the process of rehabilitating my dog's fear of thunder. It was a lot easier to just lock him in his crate...but instead this last time I worked with him and he actually eventually went to his crate and laid down on his own...nice and calm. It was amazing. I lost some sleep that night but it will be better for him and me in the long run.

[DebW]

While a dog chasing a lone cyclist will tend to stay behind or to the side of the bike, generally allowing you to keep pedaling and outrun the dog, I once had a different situation. I was pedaling with a group and the dog went for the bike ahead of me. I couldn't avoid it, hit the dog, and went down. My bike and I weren't hurt, but my wool Stil-long long underwear pants (worn under my shorts) were torn at the knee. Given that these were expensive wool long underwear and I was a poor student at the time, I actually went to the home that the dog came from and knocked on the door. My attempts to get the owner of the dog to pay for a new pair of Stil-longs were unsuccessful, and I later was able to patch them. Just a note that dog encounters don't always end as positively as Lisa's.

Then there are the country dogs that will wait for you 1/2 way up a hill...

[mimitabby]

Then there are the country dogs that will wait for you 1/2 way up a hill...

Yup, that's the kind I get off the bike for and start purposefully walking towards and tell them to GO HOME.

[Jo-n-NY]

Lisa, you dog encounter made me laugh. If I wasn't afraid I could see myself doing the same thing.

The rides you take sound so lovely to me also. It doesn't matter the pace, the main thing is you are enjoying yourself and becoming fitter at the same time. I think it is wonderful!!!

~ JoAnn

[liberty]

Once I was flying down a hill and saw two huge dogs at the bottom, lying in the middle of the road. They got up and began to act all aggressive towards me, and I knew I wouldn't be able to stop by the time I reached them. So I began to scream and shriek at the top of my lungs. Freaked the poor things out. They jumped out from in front of me. Makes for a nice story, but there's no way I'll go down that hill that fast again. Dogs are awfully unpredictable. Good thing they don't drive cars.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Once I was flying down a hill and saw two huge dogs at the bottom, lying in the middle of the road. They got up and began to act all aggressive towards me, and I knew I wouldn't be able to stop by the time I reached them. So I began to scream and shriek at the top of my lungs. Freaked the poor things out. They jumped out from in front of me.

I would have loved to have seen that.

Speaking of startling a dog...
Many years ago my mother was visiting me in Puerto Rico. My mother was a real unique character- never a dull moment. Strange things always happened to her. (probably because she instigated them)
My neighbor Annie had a little pekinese that was rather nasty and would sometimes bite people, but she kept in inside her gated patio. I was walking with my mother and we stopped to say hello to the neighbor through her iron grated fence. The little pooch was there behind the iron fence with his eyes bugging out hoping to get lucky and chomp down on someone.
Well while Annie and I were talking, my mother unexpectedly suddenly reached down and put her hand inside the bars to pet the little dog's head, and Annie and I were jumping to stop her, but it was too late to stop what was happening!
HOWEVER...as my mother's hand reached down and the little dog simultaneously leaped up with mouth open to chomp down on her hand, somehow her finger went right down the dog's throat! I honestly don't know who was the most surprised- the dog, my mother, the neighbor or myself! But the wee bug-eyed doggie jumped back gagging and ran off all distressed into the house to escape the Strange Lady, and my mother couldn't figure out how her finger wound up going down the dog's throat and started apologizing. Annie and I had a good laugh over that one for months afterwards. Whenever we wanted a good laugh one of us would simply make the finger-down-the-throat gesture...

[divingbiker]

As dog owners we should never resign ourselves to their bad behavior. ALL dogs can be trained...but usually it is the owner that needs the training first in how to train the dog.

Thanks for the advice, but I've been through obedience training with both dogs, had a specialist come out to work with us, and one dog got Canine Good Citizen certification and was a therapy dog in a nursing home till his arthritis got too bad.

It might be easy to yank on the leash and train one dog when a bike comes by, but when two (or three, before one of them died) go berserk at once, I'm happy to just be able to keep them under control. People who have walked multiple dogs understand this...it's a whole different ball game than walking one dog.

We hide behind parked cars when I see a bike coming, and I manage the situation. As I said, they're always leashed so the situation Lisa encountered can't happen with my dogs.

(I am hesitant to post this because I don't intend to get into a war of words about dog training, but I don't care for the insinuation that I haven't trained my dogs.)

[li10up]

divingbiker, I'm not insuinuating that you haven't trained your dogs at all. YOU said you resigned yourself to their BAD behaviour, not me. Dogs can be trained but still have an area or two that they need work in. That doesn't make the owner a bad person. Sometimes we just don't know what to do to correct the problem. Maybe working with one at a time would help. For years I didn't know what to do about my dog's fear of thunder. But after watching the show I mentioned I've come up with another thing to try and it worked. I've seen him take dogs, sometimes 2 or 3, which were nearly impossible to take for a walk because they would lunge at every passing person\bike\skateboard\dog or whatever and get them to walk with each other - plus he'd throw in a couple of his dogs. So, I think there is always a way to help our dogs.

I meant my post to be in no way an attack on you or your dogs. Just to say we have an obligation to not give up when it comes to our pets and to offer a possible solution.

[SouthernBelle]

There's a real thread killer.

[Aint Doody]

Sorta on the same topic--I have a friend who says he had a friend who used a dog whistle when being chased by dogs. I've ordered one. Anybody have any experience with those? I thought that would be great to hang around my neck and just blow like mad when the dogs head after me. My experience with Halt is that the dogs around here seem to have figured out just how far to stay away from the stream. I also had one dog that I got right in the face with Halt, and it never even fazed him.

[xeney]

Heh. The Dog Whisperer cracks me up, because it is always really obvious when they are setting up the worst possible behavior for him to come in and magically fix. And I bet they just don't air the segments where he fails.

Dogs aren't computers. Training is important, control is crucial, but the idea that if a dog still has a behavioral problem, that automatically means that the owner just hasn't worked hard enough to find the magical solution ... to me, that sounds like a fantasy land, and I would never trust a trainer who made a claim like that. Particularly not in regard to a fear issue.

We took one of our dogs to one of the top behaviorists in the country because her fear problems were so bad when she was a puppy, and she told us straight up: you can make this dog safe, you make her a dog you can live with, but you can't make her perfect. Let go of that idea, because she is always going to be a fearful dog. Dog fears are almost as complex as human fears, and in some ways they are harder to treat because a dog can't take an intellectual approach to her fears.

(But none of my dogs are even slightly afraid of or even interested in bicycles. In our house that would be like fearing the coffee table. Bicycle pumps, on the other hand ... just because of that one time when my husband made a tire explode. That was a couple of years ago but they still try to hide behind me whenever he gets out the floor pump or takes a wheel off a bike.)