And great feedback. Thanks!

YES!, Rocky shouts, as I read your last statement to her. Sounds like we’ve correctly established the toughness scale though:
Most folks < Mr Tough Guy Garceau < me < Rocky.

Doctors, experts, pointy-headed intellectuals. They all think they’re so much smarter than the rest of us. I’ve got a lot of common sense, so when I’m feeling good about it I’ll do what I want.

In no way did I try to upstage your incident with my one measly extra stitch. Yet, I guess, technically, I DID have more stitches than you. Sure, that make me one stitch tougher, but that's not the point. Sure I did have 14 stitches compared to your 13, but mine came suddenly and pretty much free of anxiety, blood and pain. The thing that makes your dog attack much worse is that you could see it coming and you had to endure the additional pain of seeing your wife get attacked as well. I can't even imagine that. You are tougher than me, and Rocky is probably tougher than both of us.

Scott and Rachael,
OMG!! What a frightful experience! Puncture wounds and torn flesh are not trifling injuries - please do as the doctor ordered. I'm thinking of you both and wishing you a very speedy and uneventful recovery.

I should also say that your description here was vivid and terrifying, even though I knew ahead of time. Great writing.

Sorry to alarm you and Pat, Scott. I thought about not exposing this incident at all, but decided I wanted to maintain an honest account that didn’t sanitize our experiences. It seemed like people should hear the truth and come to their own conclusions about it.

For myself this wouldn’t be a reason to stay off the road, any more than I would because bikers sometimes get killed by drunk or crazy drivers. Things happen, and you can’t avoid all risks. There are bad dogs and bad dog owners, but at least where we’ve been riding they’re a relative rarity. One bad incident (though we’ve also had our share of scares along the way) in forty years is pretty good really. It is a reason though to carry a decent first aid kit, personal identifying information, and a way to communicate.

Enjoy those raised beds! We’d probably be doing that too if our home had a yard - if we had a home.

As I facetiously said offline, a crowbar to the owner'a head might be fun to fantasize about. But seriously, I think the owner should feel the pain here- a stiff fine, responsible for your expenses related to the incident, removal of the dog. As Bill said, training a dog or preventing a dog from running loose isn't difficult. And as much as I love animals, a vicious dog is a danger to everyone.

It's painful to think of you two going through this.

So glad that the stars were aligned with proper first aid supplies, a manageable ride back to the car, and the excellent team at Blue Mountain Hospital.

And now you have your good health and superb physical condition to get you through the recovery and back on the road to your 100th birthday. I want to be at that party!!

As for the dog .. there may not be many riders through this year, but this happened on the TransAm route. I would like for the owners to see photos of your injuries and some guarantee that the dog will not harm anyone else. Will you receive confirmation from the sheriff that the vet has current rabies vaccination records?

On a more uplifting note .. great Randy Newman video!! We saw him at Aladdin around 2013 .. great show!

Hope you and Rachael have some good movies to watch while you're healing.

💛☮️💛☮️💛

Scott and Rachael,
Shocking story. Just a couple of days early for a not so funny Aprils fool’s joke. Pat and I have no horror animal stories to add and would like to keep it that way. We too are very much missing our European spring ride but thankful we have a large yard including a couple of raised vegetable beds to keep us busy along with local rides from time to time. Strange times. We wish you and Rachael speedy recoveries. Unfortunately, after reading your story, dogs may never be looked at the same way again.
Scott and Pat

Well there's areas of Vermont that are pretty sparsely populated. It's not so much the small towns, which usually have dog ordinances. It's the back roads, where you run across a house only every couple miles. Some are shacks and some are pretty spectacular hideaways that people have built. In either case, there's as good chance they're home for loose dogs anxious to defend their territory. And by the way, I love dogs. Just not ones attached to my leg. :-)

I think of dogs as being a concern to watch out for here, but I imagine it’s worse back east, just because there are more folks and dogs around. We have a lot of country where the settlements are few and far between, and you can let your guard down a bit. We need to remember to be on the alert when we pass through these little towns.

Thanks, Victa. It all happened too quickly for there to be much time for real terror to sink in. There wasn’t even all that much pain, surprisingly enough. The frightening thing for me was just looking at the injury and knowing we needed to react fast.

Recovery is going well, as far as we know at this point anyway. Pretty lucky.

Oh right, Mr. Tough Guy. Outdo me with an injury that required FOURTEEN stitches instead of the measly thirteen mine took. What am I whining about! Rocky reassured me though by observing that mine LOOKS much worse than your little hole in the shoulder - just a big inoculation, practically. If I showed you the picture of my untreated wound I’m sure you’d agree mine was MUCH worse, and that I’m a much tougher guy.

Thanks though for pointing me to that journal, which I now finally have plenty of time to read. I think it came out when we were on tour and I didn’t pick up on it at the time.

Thanks for sending the link. What an awful experience But you sure had a great attitude about it. I’m glad to see that thinks worked out okay! I sure understand the “Greg World”.