By Stan Purdum
Recently, I read a book by a man named Wayne Aho, who, at age 74, was riding west-to-east across America. Not far from Utica, Kentucky, with much of the journey behind him, he was pedaling up a steep hill when he was suddenly attacked without any advance barking by a pack of three dogs who emerged from the roadside weeds.
“Caught on the upside of a hill,” Aho wrote, “this onslaught was so quick and with three nasty hounds, I had little time to react. Instinctively, I swerved left to dodge the lead dog, which gave the second dog time to cut in front of me.”
To avoid hitting that dog, Aho slammed on his brakes, but was “fearful of falling as the thought of being on the ground and set upon by three crazed animals flashed through my mind,” he said.
He didn’t fall, but his braking gave the other two dogs time to catch him. “One bit the back of my right calf, ripping a deep gash, and the third dog made a mess of the same calf,” Aho said. “The sensation of my leg being torn apart was gruesome. All this happened in a matter of seconds.”
Thankfully, Aho was near enough to the top of the hill that he managed to break free from the pack “feeling my flesh tear as I pulled away,” he said. When he finally got far enough to stop, he saw that his bright yellow cycling sock was now crimson red, and he knew he was seriously hurt.
He had been journeying with three other riders, who soon caught up to him and rendered immediate aid, and the woman driving their support vehicle also arrived. She took measures to slow the bleeding while the other riders called 911, the police and animal control. When EMTs arrived, they transported Aho to a hospital where the doctor who stitched his leg wouldn’t tell him the stitch count, but said they were “plentiful.”
Aho rode the next two days in the support vehicle, and then a couple days on his bike, but had to return to riding in the support wagon for a bit more time. He was eventually able to remount his bike and finish the trip on two wheels.
The book by Aho is Journey of Discovery – A narrative of loss, aging, training, and what’s important: 62 Days on the TransAmerica Trail. I’ll write a fuller review of the book some other time, but the suddenness of this incident with the dogs reminded me of time when I too was riding uphill and without warning, a large dog came from behind a hedge and body slammed my bike, sending it and me crashing to the pavement, before the mutt ran off. I wasn’t badly hurt but the hit bent the cage on my front derailleur,
What that experience has in common with Aho’s is not only the suddenness of the attack but also the fact that I, like Aho, was heading up a steep hill, leaving little chance of outrunning the dog(s). In most confrontations between dogs and cyclists, there are several tactics cyclists can employ to protect themselves. Indeed, I myself have written about some of those measures here. But in the case of a sudden attack without so much as a barked warning, the cyclist may be unable to speed away or employ any of those defense moves.
So readers, have you been in a similar sudden, no warning situation yourself? If so, please tell us how, if at all, you were able to avoid damage to your person — or if you were not able to sidestep injury, what you did in the aftermath, or what you learned from the encounter.
Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.
A friend and I were riding on a tree lined country road when a pit bull, who unbeknownst to us must have been running parallel to us on the other side of the trees because of their speed when exiting the tree line, came out of the woods and was quickly at our rear wheels. I could hear his nails on the pavement… Fortunately, our survival instinct quickly took over, and we were able to outrun the dog. Neither of us knew we could ride that fast and has such good “take off” speed 🙂 Sorry, no special tips other than pedal like your life depends on it…
Indeed,, you life may well depend on it. There was terrible incident in a county adjacent to mine where a female rider had to have her leg amputated after being attacked by three pit bulls. See https://www.dispatch.com/videos/news/local/2023/11/02/columbus-cyclist-recovering-from-dog-mauling-now-an-amputee/71335605007/
I have a loud, somewhat deep voice and I use it to tell the dog “ Home”, “No”, and works like a charm!
Actually, that mostly does not work! We’ll trained dogs don’t attack, it’s the ones that are not trained .
Hmm, well maybe I’m just lucky, but over the 50 plus years of riding I have had dozens of dogs try to attack me, all I say with my Marine drill sergeant voice, “GO HOME”, and only 2 out of all those dogs decided not to go home, and chased me for about 1/4 mile before one of them got tired, the other ran across a street after about a 1/2 mile run and was hit by a semi killing it instantly.
When I’m loaded for touring, I can’t go very fast, so I have a small canister of gel pepper spray within hands reach attached to the outside of my handlebar bag if my command for them to go home doesn’t work, then if that doesn’t do the trick, I have a method of killing it, but so far, I haven’t had to use either method.
Many years back (and less than 2 weeks before RAGBRAI), I saw a “juvenile” golden lab charging at me from the top of a steep farm yard. I was very fortunate there was no traffic on that road as, in addition to stopping pedaling, I was able to veer all the way over to the left edge of the roadway. This saved me from a bad crash! However, the fairly large dog slammed the top of his head (full speed) in the region of my rear axel. SO, my rim is cracked and taco’d, the part of the frame where the drop-out is attached is stripped, and the spring on a Campagnolo pedal is broken (again, this is less than 2 weeks prior to an event). I was lucky enough to get a set of Campy wheels on eBay, found I could still use the pedal (oh so easy to unclip now!), and using strands of cable (plus pressure from the QR skewer) to hold the drop-out in place had me functional again. Aside from a “neighbor” giving me and my bike home, I was not even given an apology (let alone money for the wheel) despite the efforts of county animal control.
You have to sue them. Their homeowner’s insurance will cover it.
I’ve had more than a few dog encounters here in New Mexico. The worst one involved a paceline on a century ride that was moving at about 40 mph. An unrestrained dog ran out and managed to hit the slot just ahead of me, causing me to go over the handlebars and off the pavement. When I encounter a dog on an uphill climb, I’ve usually handled it by yelling at the dog or dismounting and using the bike as a shield. I’ve also swung a frame pump at the dog, and even squirted it from a water bottle. The last technique usually stops the dog in astonishment, giving me time to get away!
I now have a small personal defense “mace” spray that I carry on my bike, but have not had to use it.
My last day in Tupelo Mississippi, after a thousand mile tour, a quarter mile where I was dropping my bike off at a shop to ship home, a stealth pit bull bit me on my left calf. Never barked. I never saw it until he was sinking his teeth into me.
My ‘favorite’ dog attack story (there are many) was the time I was 13 and I set out with my Dad on my new yellow Sears 10 speed for a 50 mile tour. We were slowly cranking up a small grade in granny gear and I knew I wanted to stop for a rest at the top. Suddenly, 90 pounds of Doberman fury was right on my heels. Surprisingly, I was able to crank very quickly in that gear and the dog gave up after we crested that hill and started down the other side. After we stopped shaking and breathing hard, we continued on for the rest of the ride.
Sort of a “dog” story. Just a few days ago in Arizona early in the morning I rounded a corner and came upon a pack of 6 coyotes scampering about in the road. When they saw me coming they didn’t really scatter, but half retreated to one side of the road and half to the other. One of them started to come at me, almost at a trot. I yelled at it, and thankfully it stopped. I took that opportunity to pedal away as fast as I could. I can only imagine they were planning to do some sort of coordinated effort to flank me and attack. I don’t usually see that large of a group so it was concerning. In hindsight I think a very bright flashing headlight might have helped to confuse them. I frequently carry pepper spray but forgot it that day although it would have been difficult to deploy on the move. I might look into carrying some sort of noisemaker also. Or maybe a dog whistle?
Easy to say after the fact, but an option is to turn your bike 180 and escape downhill. IDK….
Very wise thought Stephen!
I was chased by a couple big dogs that were awoken by their little friend who never sleeps apparently. They had a great big downhill lawn to run down as I was going uphill. I’m really not certain how I got by them.
The tough part was coming back. I’d done around sixty miles at that point and had done much of that on gravel logging roads in the Cascades. Lots of serious elevation.
I knew I had to get past this bunch on the way back and saved as much as I had left to crest that rise and be ready to blast past them, with all the stealth I could muster. Well the ‘little one’ saw or heard me and woke up the Beasts. The bad one misjudged the ditch along the road and was thrown off enough that it missed my rear wheel by about a foot and proceeded to fly off the far side of the road. ‘Missed by this much’
I bought bear spray after that but haven’t carried it, though I think I may it I was out in the country… It’s the sudden strike that might get you
When I was just a wee little lad in a small town, a pack of dogs came after me at the bottom of a climb. I was able to outrun all but one which was a German Shepard. The dog bit me on the back of my calf and then I crashed into the curb. Some combination of the commotion of my crash and a woman running out from a nearby house screaming at the dog got it to run away. I went to the doctor and he gave me a tetanus shot which hurt worse than the dog bite. Animal control took the dog and kept him for a period of time to ensure he didn’t have rabies then released him back to the family. The dog was named Bear. My family visited them soon after with me in tow and Bear was a kind and gentle dog. The family thought it was a pack mentality that caused him to chase me. No one knew where the other dogs came from and we never saw them again. Bear and I were friends after that and he never chased me again.
When I lived and rode in Kentucky, I had frequent dog encounters. In my last 8 years in Georgia, almost none. I’ve adopted my wife’s technique that has never met me down, look at the dog and start saying “here boy!” In your friendliest tone. I don’t know if that would work on an uphill with three dogs, but it is remarkable how quickly most dogs lose interest once you’re not prey.
Not a bad idea when you have no other option!
20 years ago, I was riding in a group of maybe 12 out in the country on lightly traveled road when 2 dogs ran down a bank at us. I was maybe 4th in line going downhill & yelled at the dogs, when one ran right in front of me. It was a fairly large dog &: hitting it launched me onto my right side. I feared I had shattered my hip, but I must of hit my forearm an instant before my hip & I shattered my ulna. So now I have a titanium plate & screws in my right arm. It took almost 6 months of rehab to regain extension of my right arm.
I never found out who owned the dogs or if there were leash laws where it occurred. Ever since, my ears are very attuned to the sound of dogs when I’m riding.
For dogs my main defence is to scream at the top of my lungs “Get Back!” Along with a few words that you don’t use around children. And don’t stop screaming until the dog retreats. Sadly full-size pumps are no longer a thing so I don’t have a defensive weapon to protect myself.
But no matter what, report the incident to the police. Dangerous dogs are not a joke.
The thing besides getting bitten is the dog can cause an accident and my friend was taken out on a big downhill by a dog that ran out in front if him. It’s no joke. If you’ve ever waited at the bottom of a descent for your friend and they don’t show up after five or ten minutes, it’s not a good feeling to climb back up the hill to see what happened. And then have to bike two hours to get a car to come back and bring them home.
Remember those plastic Silca full length frame pumps? On a loaded tour, I smashed one across the nose of an attacking dog that stopped it in its tracks. Didn’t do the pump much good though.
I have often used the water bottle tip to stop dogs. They don’t see the water and when it hits them I think it startles or confuses them. We used to use our frame pumps in the old days, but could never make contact with them.
Dogs have better reflexes when they can see what you’re swinging.
Pop Pops or Snaps fireworks
One of the first rides I did after taking up cycling was with a friend in 2015 from Versailles to Condé-sur-Risle in Normandy. He had gotten a couple of hundred metres ahead of me and as I passed through a very small village a dog shot out from the side and slammed into my foot. I hadn’t had enough time to try to evade him. I didn’t crash and just kept going. Only later did I notice that my sock was slightly bloody just above the shoe, and it turned out that I had a small puncture wound there. When we got to our destination I did my best to clean the wound, but by the next day my foot was bright red and swollen so I went to my doctor who prescribed antibiotics which in due course eliminated the infection. I became worried that I could get rabies (“la rage” in French), but my doctor assured me that rabies has been eliminated among domestic animals here. Nevertheless, in retrospect I wished that I had stopped and found the dog’s owner if nothing else to reassure myself that the dog was vaccinated.
FWIW, in Spain we were told to yell, “Sale / merde!” (Sah-lay mare-dah) which means “Away – shit!” My wife Karen (who speaks Spanish) complained it is grammatically improper, and a bit unclear: is it a command followed by an exclamation, or is ‘shit’ a noun? Whatever, it worked like a charm, there.
To add some diverse fun to this painful/scary collection: we were riding our fully loaded tandem into a village in Istria. On the outskirts of town along the river was a string of desperately poor homes, one with a barn and a beautifully rust-patinaed tin roof. I slowed to make a u-turn and pull the pocket camera out of my handlebar bag for a photo. All of a sudden Karen yells “DOG!” She had a specific fear of getting bitten in a rural area of foreign country with limited access to medical care, and had stocked her handlebar bag with stones to throw. I tightened the u-turn and realized I hadn’t down-shifted when we slowed, so tried to mix in a shift at the same time we were cranking on the pedals, twisting the chain across the cluster (which snapped the next day on a hill).
The real surprise was the dog, who caught up with us: long and low and swinging a massive set of nursing teats but still incredibly fast. We just managed to get clear as Karen littered the road with her rock collection. Ever since we’ve remembered and lauded “the Fastest Lactating Bitch in Croatia.” You go girl!
That’s fantastic! Thank you.
I agree with Doug:: what has worked for me is to stop, point at them and yell “Get back,” rather than trying to outrun them. I think dogs love to chase, so if you keep riding, you are giving them what they want. I also think it depends on the size and type of dog. I’ve been fortunate not to have been surprised by super-aggressive types others have mentioned. Once on an Alabama back road, a pitbull came at me, but from a distance so that I saw him coming. I dismounted, yelled at him to “Get back,” and he stopped 15 feet away. I slowly walked away, keeping the bike between myself and the dog.
Good advice unless there are more than one and how bad they are.
I always carry a can of pepper spray clipped to my brake cable so it’s readily available. Time permitting I dismount my bike keeping it between me and the savage beast and then send a generous stream in their direction, works every-time.
I was riding through a tiny village in southern France last year and all of a sudden three or four dogs appeared, with one in particular taking a close interest in my foot and ankle.
I didn’t want to stop so I turned up the gas and unclipped my foot so that I could lash out at the dogs. After hitting the pack leader a couple of times he gave up..
Reflecting on it later, I thought that was a pretty high risk strategy and I would’ve been better off to have just stopped and put my bike between me and the dogs.
I got to put that tactic into play mid this year when a big dog and a tiny follower came out from a property and started chasing me up a hill. They stopped. when I stopped but resumed when I restarted. Fortunately, I had a couple of muesli bars in my back pocket and I used broken off pieces of them to distract the dogs while I slowly walked away.. The dogs were more interested in the muesli bars than me, so it worked out okay.
Kentucky’s ridiculous dog problem has been fully documented since at least Bikecentennial in 1976. I was chased about twice a day, all through the state! At least we carried pumps to wave, but that didn’t change many behaviors. The only time I’ve ever thought about an actual firearm on a bicycle…. Which just shows how shaken one gets by this.
I now live in a fairly rural desert area, with miles of dirt roads. Back in the early days of mountain bikes, I thought this would be a dream, to cruise around without cars. Yeah, right. Dogs galore, usually from the trashiest abodes. The only time I tried “Repel”, the cyclist’s dog spray, with the handlebar clip. I soon figured out that I was more likely to squirt myself in the face. And I don’ really ride the dirt roads around here much….
I was riding uphill by myself on a back road in Tennessee one time years ago when two large dogs came out of a yard on my left and tried to attack me. I kicked at the lead dog’s head with my left leg, so the dog decided to try attacking me from my right side and ran directly in front of my bike. I ran into the dog, knocked it down, my handlebars flipped all the way to the right, and I fell on the road. The dog ran off the road whimpering. I had big abrasions on my right leg, arm, and side, though my bike was relatively unscathed. I got up and walked up to the house and knocked on the door while the dogs ran under a pickup truck in the driveway. No one was home. The dogs started coming after me again, so I picked up a couple rocks and threw them at the dogs, and they ran back under the truck. On the way back to the road I left my calling card by knocking over the rickety mailbox on the property, then finished my ride with blood running down my legs and arm. I almost had a hole in my right arm near my elbow which took a long time to heal.
One thing I learned from this encounter and other episodes is that roads with little traffic on them are more likely to have dogs running loose on them than busier roads. So while back roads are nice for reduced traffic, the likelihood of problems with dogs goes up proportionately. I started carrying pepper spray with me after this happened and it has saved me from several more attacks on rides since this one.
I use a small keychain alarm clipped to my handle bar bag when I tour. It sounds like a car alarm when activated. I’ve used it twice in just the last year and have had success with it. I’m not coordinated or brave enough to use a spray can or water bottle.
We really need to hold the owners accountable for this type of behavior. Like really accountable. It’s ridiculous we need to worry about this along with all of the other dangers on a simple bike ride.
Yes, I agree that the riders need to report the incident immediately. I have been chased and bitten as my husband has also. He was bitten as we were riding up a steep hill and the dog came out of nowhere. A dog bite is a public health issue and if the skin has been broken the likelihood of infection is very high.
Feb 2025 I was riding home from pickleball when a woman and her dog who were jogging toward me, she tripped over the dog leash as I approached and the dog got scared or something and attacked my wheel. I don’t remember the crash or falling, until the first responders were above me saying Don’t get up! She had called 911 and left, motherfucker. Concussion, broken hip, two months off the bike. I’m better now but SO CARFEFUL around dogs and stupid dog owners.
When I started biking to work, there was a big dog on the porch of a house set back from the road. For three days he took off after me and got close but I managed to sprint until he lost interest. On the fourth day, I brought pepper spray and nailed him when he got close. On the fifth day, he stood up on the porch and then sat back down again.
Well maybe I’m just lucky, but over the 50 plus years of riding I have had dozens of dogs try to attack me, all I say with my Marine drill sergeant voice, “GO HOME”, and only 2 out of all those dogs decided not to go home, and chased me for about 1/4 mile before one of them got tired, the other ran across a street after about a 1/2 mile run and was hit by a semi killing it instantly.
When I’m loaded for touring, I can’t go very fast, so I have a small canister of gel pepper spray within hands reach attached to the outside of my handlebar bag if my command for them to go home doesn’t work, then if that doesn’t do the trick, I have a method of killing it, but so far, I haven’t had to use either method.
Some say they didn’t hear a dog coming up behind them, but if you listen carefully when riding you can hear them breathing heavily as they come up behind you, you might also hear their nails on the pavement, or the movement of the weeds on the side of the road. I have always been able to hear the non-barkers coming up behind me, even at my age of 73 I heard one just a month ago and I have a degree of ringing in my ears but it doesn’t affect my hearing according to test results. I was on my road bike on that short chase, so was able to ramp up my speed. Most dogs won’t chase outside their home boundary area, and this one quit when he got to the end of his.
This happened back in the 1970s. Dog attacks were far more frequent back then. I think this is because we did not have an adequate supply of attorneys. My friend and I were on a 100 mile ride. To sum up his general attitude, he had made know in the past that he considered violence the most sincere form of criticism. He was a very fit Marine Corp combat veteran from Vietnam. As expected, we had suffered multiple dog attacks so the stage was set. We were riding by a large mansion with white columns and a large front porch with huge front yard. There were four people and two German Shepards on the porch. Well, the dogs came after us. The people on front porch did nothing, no calling the dogs. I was ready to sprint for it. Not my friend. He slammed on the brakes, came off the bike, looked around and saw a downed branch, and broke off a club. By this time the dogs were closing on us (I at least demonstrated some bravery and did not run away). The friend let out a scream and closed on the approaching dogs. He sidestepped the first dog and booted it in the ribs. The dog came off the ground. Next he backhanded the second dog on the head. It did a front somersault, The dogs were now headed back to the porch. The friend pointed his club and screamed “You SOBs are next’. The four porch people trampled each other trying to get through the front door. I was afraid they would get firearms and I convinced my friend to retreat. It was the most stunning display of ultra violence I had ever seen. My guess is that the two German Shepards swore off chasing cyclists.