Chased by a dog

[witeowl]

Stop, put your bike between you and the dog (and be prepared to use it as a weapon if necessary), square off your shoulders and "get big", and yell (anything "go home", "no", "bad dog", etc), maybe take a step or two towards them. Most will run back home before you get to the end of that sequence.

Yup. This is what I do, but there's an awful side-effect when out running with my dog. My dog is trained well enough to (at least try to pretend to) ignore the other dog, but we'll often get other dogs coming up and trying to be social. Sure, it might start out social, but I can't stop two fighting dogs so it's just best to keep us away from the loose dog. (Sometimes, even with two owners of dogs on leashes, a dog will somehow show some doggie disrespect - for all I know it's my dog - and a little spat will break out.)

So, I stop, I tower, I yell, I point. But then I feel bad when the dog cowers. They never seem to actually go away, so I have to repeat the performance every few feet until we're out of the dog's range where it finally stops and watches us leave.

Some dogs look just so, so sad and hurt and confused. I know they're only trying to be social, but I've got to take the safe route.

I know there's no solution; I was just posting this to kind of vent my sadness. Well, there is one solution, but somehow I just can't get all those loose-dog owners to be better dog owners.