This is something that happened at the Katy Flatland Century, which is still bugging the crap out of me.
After leaving the third rest stop on the metric century route, a dog ran across the road right behind me. It startled the hell out of me, and for a minute I thought he was going for my tires. (Which is a thing that happens.) But instead the dog went barreling full-bore into the cyclist behind me and literally knocked him off his bike.
I stopped and ran back to help. I’m guessing the dog was okay – he ran into the yard of the house we were passing, and there were other dogs there so I didn’t want to go check and intrude on their territory. The cyclist was mostly okay. He had his helmet on, but he tore up his knee pretty bad and was hurting. Me and another cyclist helped him get back on his feet, get his chain back on his bike, and then he headed back to the rest stop, probably to call it a day.
The other guy that stopped to help seemed pretty sure the dog hadn’t been going after the cyclist either. He thought the dog might have wanted to cross the road and just timed it badly, maybe a little scared by us. Which makes sense, the way it happened. (However, dogs chasing you while you’re on your bike and going after your legs or the tires is a thing that happens, and it’s scary.)
What bothers me about the whole thing is that this dog was just wandering around. The front yard of that house was open, so all of the other dogs were free to wander as well with no one to watch them. I understand Katy is kind of out in the country, so to speak – it’s all fields and the occasional house in that area – but there’s a road right there, and it has a speed limit of 45. There were plenty of cars on it with us as well.
Just seems like a bad, bad idea to me. The poor dog probably got through colliding with a cyclist okay. That wouldn’t be the case with a car.