Oehmen Report: Paceline Approved by Dogs

OK so last year was a bad year for me and dogs. Which some of you may remember from my emails for help and Farrell may remember me giving him a call on the verge of tears ready to quit cycling.... stupid dogs. One thing i read or maybe i was told was that some dogs like the German Shepard that chased are herding dogs which is why he wasn't behind me but next to me on the other side of the rode.

Anyways there have been no incidents this year ... knock on wood! But yesterday at the melon century i grabbed onto a very large group of riders of about 16. Most were from a club with red shirts a bottle cap on the back of the shirts. Sorry i don't remember the name of the club or the riders. Anyways we had a pace line going and at one time we were all single file. Then i hear everyone yell back dog.... And i look over and see 2 dogs. One a golden medium size but plump dog and the other a beagle, both with collars. The golden dog is in the middle of the intersection slowly walking towards us while the beagle is laying in the grass.

He didn't chase us. Just watched us go by with a grin on his face. And some may argue that he might have been too tired from chasing riders already past or maybe he was way too much out of shape to chase a cyclist. I looked in his eyes while he looked at us and i say he was thinking that everything looked in order with us and nobody needed to be herded back into line. We had a real good pace line going.

It is a good thing that they didn't meet up with us later because a few guys decided we weren't going fast enough once they got to the front and completely blew the pace line apart into a zillion different pieces. But that is a whole other story. Well that was ok. I did 50 miles with them and did the other half at a nice easy pace by myself.

Liz Oehmen