Coyote Buddies

Here in nw Tucson our coyotes are very vocal and active right now (mating season). A few days ago my heeler visited our neighbor and returned from there playing with a coyote girl that he has known for a couple of years. She was following him up our long drive way, but she has a partner now who was not happy with that. His hackles were up and he chased my heeler off. But then she ran after the dog again, so he made playful moves at her again, until her mate rebuffed him again. All the time the trio was moving towards me and my leashed Aussie who was barking angrily. Finally the male coyote had enough and drove his girl off, and my heeler joined me to go inside. Very clearly, hackles were raised but no further aggression. Pretty soon all of them, coyotes and my 3 dogs were howling, just separated by our dog run fence that the coyotes could easily scale, but they never have in 23 years and several generations of dogs. Our little adventure inspired me to make a coyote of my local wild clay