Honestly, a dog ate my shoe!
Well, I didn’t wimp out today, honestly. A dog ate my shoe!
It’s no secret that cyclists and dogs don’t always get along. If you are a cyclist you have undoubtedly been chased by a dog a few times, or perhaps too many times to count. Generally, dogs are a nuisance and are sometimes downright dangerous to cyclists when biking, but, well this is a new one for me.
I came down stairs to go out and take a ride. I walked out to our front porch to pump up my tires and put on my shoes, but where the previous evening I know I had my pare of cycling shoes I only saw one!
I had left them on our porch to dry off after a muddy and rainy ride the other day. They had been too wet to just put in their normal spot, and I usually take my cycling shoes off on the porch so that the cleats don’t scratch our floors. But there, where there had been two shoes was now only one.
I took a little glance around and saw a boot in my neighbor’s yard. Uh oh! Yes, it was a boot! Immediately I suspected what had happened. I walked out to our front walkway and over to our neighbor’s house. Our neighbors had just moved in in the spring. Their dog, part Blue Healer which is a very pretty dog, has a fenced in back yard, but has on numerous occasions escaped the fence and has roamed the neighborhood usually doing nothing more than running away from it’s owner and having doggy fun. Today however my fears of actual property damage were realized when I walked up their front walk and saw the remains of my right Sidi Genius 5 cycling shoe lying in the grass inside the gated side and back yard. I walked through the OPEN Gate of the fence and my heart sank as I approached the shoe and saw that part of the heal was gone and the strap that latches the shoe shut had been chewed off.
We had not seen the neighbors all weekend and they did not appear to be home at that point either. I sighed and walked back to our porch soggy doggy drool infested shoe in hand. I was angry that the dog had destroyed my shoe, but I was not angry at the dog. In Lancaster, Wisconsin residents are responsible for their pets’ actions. This means that because Asia (that’s the dog’s name) was left once again to easily escape her fenced in domain that I will have to confront my neighbors and let them know that they owe me a new pair of $250 cycling shoes.
More to come I am sure.