The history of firearms is fascinating, not just because there are so many unusual guns that have become collector’s items that need to be stored securely, but also because they tell a story of the society that made them and the priorities they had at that time.
This is what makes hunting rifles such as the highly collectable pigeon guns so fascinating; there was a time when live sport shooting events were so popular that guns dedicated solely to success in these events were created.
One of the most unusual trends in guns however comes in the era of the bike revolver, and the reason why this is such an oddity is that the guns were collectively known as Velo Dog revolvers.
Cycling And Dogs
Cycling emerged in the 1850s, but it was not until the development of the Rover Safety Bicycle in 1885 that it became a viable way of getting around beyond a very local area.
However, in the early days of cycling, the most common safety accessory a cyclist would have was not a helmet, which would not even be thought about until the death of Lawrence of Arabia but instead was a gun.
Because early velocipedes were so expensive, they became very common targets for highway robbers and therefore having the ability to defend oneself during a time when the police were not necessarily available everywhere to help was important.
Small revolvers became very popular, and even when the price of bicycles dropped so precipitously that they were no longer targets of robbery in the same way, many people continued to carry a revolver with them because man’s best friend turned out to be a cyclist’s greatest nemesis.
Dogs would commonly attack cyclists, either directly or by being so excited by the new transport method that they would get in the way and cause fairly nasty accidents and falls.
Because of this, revolvers were kept around to fend them off, ideally by scaring them with the loud noise but potentially by doing something unthinkable in a modern dog-loving world.
The problem was that even small barreled revolvers could be fairly bulky, they needed to be drawn at speed and the hammer could potentially snag and rip clothes.
This led René Galand’s son Charles-Francois to create the Velo-Dog, a dedicated small barrel, small calibre pocket revolver designed specifically to protect against dog attacks.
It had an internal hammer, making it a double action pistol by design, and featured no trigger guard, so the trigger itself could fold into the weapon’s body.
Initially, it launched a specially created .22 calibre Velo-Dog round, but eventually, this was replaced with a more conventional .22 Long Rifle or .25 Automatic Colt Pistol because ultimately they proved to be cheaper but just as effective.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Velo-dog was surprisingly popular and remained so until the start of the First World War, when the priority moved away from tiny revolvers designed to scare off dogs and towards service revolvers to fight in the war to end all wars.