Thanks everyone for all the supportive, thought-provoking posts on this thread! I really appreciate it, and your kind words have done a great deal to cheer me up. Annie, I especially appreciated your relating your experience gettting back to riding after having a broken pelvis. It's nice to know that my fears are very normal. And that you came back and were able to conquer yours - maybe I can too. And I am with you - I love riding too much (and have such nice bikes!), there's no way I could give it up completely.

I started formulating an action plan last night of how I could still manage to ride on the road (eventually) and feel safer, and that is to only do group rides that I am familiar with (the route, that is) and know to be dog-free. There's a women's ride I've done for two years on Wednesday nights that has never had a single dog problem because of where the route is, for instance, and there are some weekend club rides/routes that are much more dog-free than others. If I could just ride on the road twice a week once I am healed and ready, I think that would be just fine with me. Then the other days, I could do mountain biking and paddling with my husband (we have kayaks). I think just a bit less emphasis on road riding would probably do me a bit of good, since I tend to take anything I really enjoy doing to an extreme, and last summer was riding five days a week. There are other things in life, and I think I'd enjoy my rides even more if I didn't feel compelled to ride allllll the time. We'll see, but it's nice to think about riding again in a way that I might feel safer.

Thanks again!
Emily