Joy Beeson wrote:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 14:18:28 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

With what do you spray it? Your water bottle?

That can work, actually. If you have no Halt and you think a dog may
attack, fill your mouth with water. If the dog does attack, spit in
his face. The odds are that this has never happened to him before,
and he will sit down to think it over.



Even a water bottle will do.

I learned that trick many years ago in the old rec.bicycles newsgroup
(before it was re-organized into the sub-groups we have now). For many
dogs, a blast of water is unexpected, and the relative chill (even from
a warm bottle) is often enough to jar them just enough.

I've never had to use that on my bike, but not too long after I learned
that I had problems with a neighbor with an untrained dog, an overgrown
puppy. I got really annoyed when the dog would bark at me when I would
walk through my back yard. One time, I went after the dog with the
garden hose, and that really got the dog's attention.

After that, if the dog even slightly growled at me, when I would make a
move for the faucet, the dog would quickly retreat, with tail between legs.

I considered my back yard to be mine, and when I established that with
the dog, I never had further problems.


One consideration for using water over some sort of chemical is that if
you inflict pain on the animal, that may cause the animal to remember
you as the source of that, and become more aggressive, in the future.
The water has the advantage of simply being unexpected, and a moment of
cold discomfort.

Smith