Reply #99: OK... I'll give you the whole story.

[Bigmack]

My wife and I bike a lot... over 3000 mi per year. In order to bike from our place we often have to pass thru an area that has a lot of roaming, untrained dogs. A lot of them are large....part pitbull or rotweiller. (Why is it that some people who are powerless in our society think that having a large/mean dog makes them more powerful?)

My wife had one bike crash that had her in the hospital and rehab for a month, so we are both very conservative bikers. One of the most dangerous things about dog/bike encounters is that the rider gets knocked off the bike and injured, and I'll do anything to keep that from happening again.

I've "trained" a lot of dogs in the are to leave us alone by using Wasp and Hornet spray. I just lay a trail of that stuff behind the bikes if any dog even looks like he might be interested in following us or acting aggressive. Negative reinforcement. I've got a great Voice of Command, and "Go Home" works pretty well. We never try to outrun them, we always stand and interact. Hell, I even carry treats.... that really screws them up. With this training regime, we go months without any problem. New dogs keep popping up, tho, to replace the ones killed on the road or whatever. And puppies! Nobody ever heard of spay/neuter in that area.

The day in question, two rottweiller crosses came out of nowhere as we were going uphill. They were snarling and circling us... getting closer. My wife was yelling "Go Home", and I was yelling for somebody to come and get their dogs or I was going to kill them, meanwhile getting out the 9mm. They were about 10 feet away, I had the safety off and was going to fire into the ground near one of them when they finally backed off. The next shot was going into body mass... quickly. We walked our bike for a quarter-mile and they flanked us all the way... grumbling.

I love dogs and have had dogs my whole life, but I'm not going to get bit or crash.

On the larger question of carrying guns....I guess the most concise answer I can give is to say that I've never fired a weapon in self defense since Vietnam, but I would if I have to.