"Grumman-581" wrote:

When I was first starting out letting my dog run beside me on a leash while
riding my trail bike, I kept the leash in my right hand, wanting him to be
on that side of the bike... A couple of times, he would see something and
try to cross in front of me and I would slam on the brakes with my left
hand... Well, that was the front brake and as such, I quickly did an end
over, followed quickly by a near face plant, followed soon thereafter with
choice cuss words directed towards the stupid ass dog... Eventually, I
figured that the dog wasn't going to get any smarter, so I reversed the
brakes so that the left brake lever controls the rear brake... Kind of
difficult to do an end over when you are only putting on the rear brake...

Some of us are doomed to repeat the same mistakes... ;-)

I remember running my girlfriend's Irish setter (like a lot of women -
beautiful, but not too bright) (the dog, not the girlfriend), using a
longish leash. I got a couple miles in before wearing the dog out,
and headed back to her house. There was a fairly big hill on the way,
and I decided to see what the terminal velocity of an Irish setter is.

This experiment was going well until my speed exceeded that of the dog
slightly. I let out a little more leash as I reached for the brakes.

Unfortunately, that's the moment the dog decided running on the RIGHT
side of the speed limit sign would be a great idea.

Imagine coasting down a hill at ~20mph on an old road bike with drop
bars, wearing gym shorts and a muscle shirt (no helmet - I was young
AND dumb), and then turning the bars hard to the right.

I went over the bars and managed to tuck and roll, and actually did a
handspring out, landing on my feet (and not a soul around to see it).
Fortunately my guardian angle was apparently on duty that day and I
only got a little biffed up. Slightly scraped, but wiser.

Mark Hickey