Quote Originally Posted by cruziegirl
I think the air horn idea sounds great but it does mean having to grab for something, find the trigger and blast it off...none of which is easy when some big, mean dog is flying at you like a missile.
Fortunately, the horn trigger will be mounted on my handlebar, and all you have to do is press it! (The bottle part with the air is mounted in a water bottle cage.) So it should be VERY easy to use, easier than Halt, I'll just have to remember to pump up the bottle part with a pump now and then (it runs on air just like a tire, but says you can get many blasts with one pump up).

Thanks for all the well wishes. We just had another cyclist in our club crash badly yesterday, breaking a hip and femur, so I am really jumpy today. His crash was not caused by dogs or a motor vehicle - sounds like it was a paceline collision, but still...it does make me even more frightened to get out there again. I have totally lost the cloak of invulnerability I used to wear while riding, and now I just see danger everywhere. I am hoping that will fade in time, but it's just too early to tell.

I've been thinking more about getting into mountain biking. I'm a complete novice to that; just got my first entry-level mtb this winter for riding gravel roads and trails around our neighborhood, but I might have to get more involved with that. Even though I LOVE riding the roads and doing club rides, and even though I know that crashes certainly happen on the trails, it just feels safer to me right now since there are no vehicles and normally no chasing dogs in the woods.

Emily