Flight or Flight....I flighted, Steve fighted

For those of you who haven't spent a lot of everyday life time with me, you may not know that I have a fear of big dogs. It doesn't bother me all the time, but certain situations just bring out the whole adrenaline rush fight or flight thing.

Here's the perpatrator...or a close relative anyway.

Steve and I went for a bike ride this evening and encountered this guy (a lot more ratty and rabid looking!) out in the boonies near the Gentry Safari. We were doing a 7.5 mile loop and were just over halfway through. Since I am pretty out of shape, my uphill speed was reeeeeally slow. Steve was bringing up the rear, so I reached Mr. Friendly first.

Unfortunately this occured at the low point between two hills. He came charging out at me barking like he was going to eat my leg like a drumstick. My response: yelling, "STEVE!" and jerking my leg up to my face. There's the flight.

Steve came shooting up behind me yelling and kicking at the dog from his bike. There's the fight. The dog decided Steve was a lot meaner than I was and walked off. However, about halfway up this hill, I realized that between the stupid hill and the fear response, my heart rate had about doubled. My choices weren't good: stay on the bike and die of heart failure or get off the bike and get eaten by the dog. I stayed on long enough to make sure the dog was gone and then had to walk a good 5 minutes to get my heart back down to a countable number of bpm.

So now we're back home, and I'm thinking that I can probably count that as an 8.5 mile ride since my heart definitely got its aerobic activity for the day!

Next time, I'm taking the pepper spray.