23. Chased by Lithuanian dogs

The last time I was chased by dogs before this incident, was in 2010, in New Delhi. The dogs there were very chill during the day, but turned into meth-fueled werewolves in the evening. Like the three yellow and mangy dogs that suddenly started to bark wildy and chase me for no reason on the main road in the district Paharganj.

I didn't know how to react, so I started to run, which wasn't a good idea of course. Back then I still wore surfing shorts every day when it was hot weather, and one of the dogs snapped his jaw at me and bit the loose fabric of the shorts, which made me instantly freeze and turn around, pointing my finger at the dog in an accusatory way. To my surprise they just stopped being aggressive at that point, and slowly went away.

Farm dog country, outside of the Lithuanian village Vaickūniškės.

Yesterday was a different story. I was going west here in the Lithuanian countryside, when I saw an old chubby farmer next to a huge haystack 80 meters away from the road (gps-location). He had a pitchfork in his hand and a dog next to him, and I slowed my bike down to see what he was doing.

It just seemed ineffective for a single person to stack hay manually with a pitchfork on that haystack, and I was starting to wonder if he was trying to spear rats instead?

It was at this point that I saw the other two dogs that I hadn't spotted until now, who were running to intercept me diagonally over the fields towards a point further up the road.

The thing that scared me was that they were completely silent. The Indian dogs had barked when they chased me, but these dogs were running at full speed in silence, like they were on a hunt and tried to remain undetected. They were soon joined by the dog that I saw first.

I looked at the farmer to see if he would call them back, but he just stood there as silenct as the dogs, resting on his pitchfork while watching them go. No compassionate dog owner would let his dogs chase a random cyclist on a road with a 90km/h speed limit for no reason. 😡

The dogs were lost out of sight when they went down in the ditch left to me, but a second later they re-emerged and shot up on the tarmac, and I got a good look at them for the first time. They were medium-sized brownish mix breeds with slender builds, and when they saw that I saw them they started to bark. One was to my left and the other to the right, and the third dog was further behind, trying to catch up.

The dog to the right of me was the most aggressive one. It kept lunging in close towards my right foot, but I constantly had to look to the left as well to keep track of what the other dog was doing.

My only thought was to keep my feet away from them as best as I could. Stopping wasn't really an option, since that would force me to put one foot down to the ground. So I had to pedal on, even if it triggered their hunting instinct even more.

Unfortunately it was a slight uphill, and a fully loaded bike isn't an optimal escape vehicle. Especially at the end of the day when you have many kilometers in your legs. But it was a straight road, and I thought to myself that I will tire them out eventually if I kept going, and went as fast as I could.

It took longer than expected, and the chase lasted for more than a kilometer, and they didn't stop until I rode into the forest ahead. The trees lining the road gave them less space to dart in and out, and we were probably out of their territorial bounds by then. Soon after that they were gone.

I went another km further into the forest and set up camp, just in time before the rain started to pour down. All in all a succesful day, all limbs attached. 😄

The village church. Did they put the tiger cutouts there to warn foreigners of the local predators? 😉