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news
Jeremy and Tara on 23ABC after the dog attack. "She's a hero," he saysVideo: Have-a-go hero cat saves young cyclist from dog attack
What would you do if someone you loved was attacked by a dog while pootling around on his bike? Tara the family cat didn’t hesitate to get stuck in when her owner’s four-year old son was dragged off his bike by a dog.
In a video that’s swept the internet this morning (there must be 10 postings of it in my Facebook feed alone) you can see young Jeremy Triantafilo innocently playing in the street on his bike.
The surveillance footage switches to a dog that sneaks round the back of the car Jeremy’s playing by and attacks him from behind, dragging him off his bike.
Supercat
Seconds later, Tara the cat belts in like Batman swooping into an alley to stop a mugging, barrels into the dog and chases it away.
At the end of the video, Jeremy’s mum Erica leaves the boy — after making sure he wasn’t seriously hurt — to chase the dog away and alert its owners that it had got out of the yard.
Jeremy sustained a substantial bite in the incident — you can see it at the end of the video — but the family say he was otherwise unharmed.
After the incident, the family, who live in Bakersfield, Indiana, spoke to local TV station 23ABC. Jeremy’s father Roger Triantafilo said: “I’ve never seen a cat do anything like that, especially ours.”
Jeremy said: "She's a hero."
Man's best friend
They might be man’s best friend but badly-controlled dogs can be a substantial hazard to cyclists. The late Richard Ballantine even devoted a long section of the seminal Richard’s Bicycle Book to dealing with dog attacks, with advice such as ramming your hand down a larger dog’s throat to choke it to death, and picking up smaller dogs by the back legs to bash them against the road.
Dog attacks on cyclists seem to be less common than in the 70s when Ballantine was writing, but you can still get devices like the Dog Dazer to ward them off with an annoying ultrasonic noise.
And while we wouldn’t suggest you carry a cat around for protection on the off-chance you get attacked by a dog, here’s a fella who does just that (carry a cat on his bike, that is; not necessarily for protection):
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
Latest Comments
- brooksby 4 sec ago
A plebiscite? Is that like when you start a petition calling for a new general election because you don't like the result of the last one?
- Flintshire Boy 24 min 24 sec ago
[Sorry - wrote mine before saw yours! You make the point much better than I.] .
- grOg 3 hours 5 min ago
Where does it state in the article that Ashley purchased the stock? it does state that Ashley bought the brand and intellectual property, not the...
- rogerwb 5 hours 45 min ago
Jump off the bike and run across. I cycle in trainers though.
- momove 6 hours 48 min ago
Cheers for the lesson! Wasn't expecting one so was pleasantly surprised, especially getting to find the origin of "laconic"!
- ktache 7 hours 35 min ago
Isn't it a rights issue?
- Daddy Feebs 8 hours 38 min ago
If anything, it looks a bit like an SL6
- wtjs 9 hours 14 min ago
Other commenters have different views True!
- Daclu Trelub 9 hours 29 min ago
Incredibly bone-headed.
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34 comments
The follow-up story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSM7L6b1Dgg
THE END
Clever comeback, emoticons.
Said DOG-cc
Keep digging, you will reach Australia before you find any sense.
Boy, you clearly have a screw loose somewhere.
@Dogcc. This is the internet so I don't expect you to believe everything you read in comments, but it was you who turned this into a debate about dog behavioral science when you didn't have all the facts. I said 'it is well reported' You haven't read this article and then tried to correct me when I am referencing facts from other articles. Needless contradiction from a position of ignorance. Nice try at back pedaling but you contradicted me because you don't know about the story.
Nah.. that's wrong. The article posted here on road.cc with a short description about the story is what the ensuing discussions have gone on about. Sure there's always a larger background to everything on the Net. But the article is posted here and it's here that we draw the line at establishing the confines of the context. All this rubbish is entirely Off-Topic anyway. Who cares about Cats and Dogs and their Moronic Handlers/Owners.
Obviously you care; seems like thinking and typing at the same time might be a problem for you.
Other articles describe the dog as a cross between a Labrador and a chow. Labradors are generally fairly placid but chows can be very aggressive indeed and I've seen them attack on a number of occasions. Another article also mentioned that this dog did not like either children or cyclists. If you watch the footage you can see how it stalked the child and then attacked viciously, pulling the kid from his bike. For a dog to attack like that begs the question of how it has been treated.
Good post.
I wonder why though behavioural tendencies come out differently in different breeds. That's if an animal's behaviour is indeed a product of its environment.
The article vaguely mentions about the dog getting out of some yard. Still it could've been stray or domenstic, it's impossible to say without actual facts relating the Dog to its Owner(s). Who's yard was it, the Owner's, the Dog's?
"...to chase the dog away and alert its owners that it had got out of the yard."
Nowhere in this article is there any information about the dog's breed, whether it's agressive or not, where it was kept, or the amount of care the owner(s) took of the dog. On those bases alone I asked you how do you know. If you don't know then be quiet. Don't introduce new and made up comments in your sentences for which there is little substantial fact to back it up. Now, this was all besides the point to the discussion.
Don't go commenting me with irrelevant psychobabble when you're turning the argument out of control.
@Dogcc, Oh I'm Sorry, did I use the wrong adjective for you, did it confuse you? I'll make it clear, by 'civilise' I meant 'habituate the dog to the presence of strange humans without attacking them.'
The information is in this article and the many others published about the incident. Read the article first next time before pouring scorn on others for using one particular word.
^^^ How can you say anything about that dog? It's a stray dog or perhaps someone's pet. Difficult to say from the video alone.
Animals won't attack other animals (Humans included) for reasons of malice. It's more a question of predator versus prey -- namely predator catching its prey. There are many instances in this country no less, of dogs (pets) mauling their victims for questionable reasons. If dogs were wild their prey would be considerably smaller than small children. I believe the domestication of dogs by Humans has lead to psychotic tendencies in dogs, adopted due to Human nature and culture. Psychosis in Humans can readily be shown to exist. There are examples which can be pointed out. Dogs as a species wouldn't exist were it not for Humans.
The dog was an aggressive cross breed kept in a back yard that got out. It was not a stray. It is well reported. If the owner did not have time to civilise the dog by taking it out in public they shouldn't have it, or have those breeds. Simple as that, it is the owners fault.
The psychobabble after that is totally irrelevant.
It's your argument that's totally irrelevant, bikeboy76.
You don't civilise a dog, you train a dog. I mean we're not asking the dog to drink tea. I don't know where you've got all the rest of the information from, about this particular dog.
Bikeboy76 you're obviously a cyclist but none the wiser.
I sure hope that dog is no longer alive.
Dogs are killed every day for simply not having a home. This one has a home and decided to be violent towards a child.
Toss it in a phuckin' woodchipper.
Don't think that dog understood what a child is? BuIIshit. Animals understand children just as well as we do. In fact, many animals tend to be far more tolerant of abuse or painful accidents inflicted by children for this very reason.
When I was young, our pets would let my young cousin do stuff that they would never in a million years let us do (pick up by the belly, play with the tail, pull whiskers etc).
That dog knew what was going on and was either going for a sportkill or an easy taste of blood. That was not an accident.
What an utter pussy
Cat is the new Dog?
Off to the local shelter tomorrow to see if I can get me a cat.
Tenuous...was he a CAT 1 rider....?
Tenuous...was he a CAT 1 rider....?
Impressive/weird number of CCTV angles but yeah, total ninjacat! It was like it had been waiting in a cannon for something to happen, then at the first sign of trouble, gave the command and BOOM - eat cat, dog!
It's a simple message; Don't fuck with Cats.
Why was someone videoing this from different angles? Have I missed something or is there an element of staging to this??
CCTV, if you think it was staged, look at the damage done
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-shows-cat-save-boy-fr...
Never under estimate the power of a cat, my wife was talking the the neighbor and his 3 small westy type dogs when our cat spotted them jumping on her, (just for attention) our tom got jealous and decided to take them all on, the panic that ensued was terrific, in between trying to beat him off with a small branch and laughing he managed to scare them all away even the owner who had by this time taken the hump. Brill video
lucky boy
Yeh great, but if it shits in my garden it will have a spade up its arse! The cat not the boy!
Laddie was on a balance bike = cyclist.
I MUST get my cat to do that.
Plus, its the internet, you can't complain about cat videos, even here
For crying out loud people, it's a ninjacat - what's not to like?!
I'm with Lois. Totes cats.
Hello Road.cc! I know you fairly well and you're lovely and all that, plus its a smashing lovely smashing video with lots of loveliness in it (well, not all of it...plus who has that many cameras in their home?!) but isn't it a littttttle bit tenuous?
Don't be angry!
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