I cycle quite a lot in the beautiful French countryside, in Auvergne. It’s a very nice region, and I love it.
The only inconvenience, apart from a few nasty hills, are farm dogs. Those little guys are not always attached on a leash or kept in a close perimeter, and you often run into one that is running around freely.
If they’re small dogs, it’s usually okay, you can stay on the saddle and go past. You just have to be careful that it doesn’t jump into the spokes of the wheels.
But with larger dogs, I get rather intimidated. One technique consists in climbing down from the bike, walking slowly past the big fella maintaining the bike between him and you.
I thought it was bad enough to have to deal with stray dogs in the French countryside, but I was reading a post on a bicycle forum about cycling in Turkey and nasty encounters with Kangal dogs.
This is sort of the “official” Turkish breed, and they’re used by Turkish shepherds as guardian dogs for sheeps.
A typical Kangal dog, complete with spiked collar.
So apparently this is very frequent to run into these when cycling in Turkey. I’ve read that when they are well-bred, they develop a strong instinct of protection for their flock, and they go as far as chasing wolves that attack sheeps (hence the spiked collar which protect them from wolf bites at the neck).
Problem is cyclists are also considered intruders, and those dogs are extra large and fit. I really like their appearance, but man I would feel very uncomfortable having to deal with them, look at the size of this dog:
I’m not sure I feel like going cycling in Turkey…
