At least once every day Tobie gets very excited at the windows and comes to get me. It’s usually to demand that I go chase cattle out of the yard. He is resolved – reluctantly – that he’s never going to be allowed to do it himself but he still insists that cattle in the yard constitutes a threat to the private peace and if he can’t do it, I must. Seriously, he won’t settle down till I drop what I’m doing and go chase a cow or group of cows away, calves in tow. Which I’m happy to do because while things are hardened to the point where they seldom do any property damage anymore they do very messily shit all over the place.
So anyway: this morning I’m baking bread and Tobie gets that rushing between the windows/rushing to me thing going. I look around outside and can’t see a single cow in sight, not even in the distance. But I gradually hear a dog barking. It’s too far away for there to be any hope of seeing anything so I go back to my bread dough. But it gets louder. And closer. And it’s a strange mixture: On the one hand it’s barking incessantly the way dogs sometimes do but every now and then it stops and yipyipyips exactly like a coyote. It’ll be twenty years late next year, and all the time I’ve lived here I’ve never heard a coyote bark but that yipping is pure coyote. This goes on for half an hour or more before the noise stops: it gets closer but I never see anything when I look.
It makes me wonder because several times over the past couple of months Neighbor L has told me that a “coyote pup” keeps coming into her yard and drinking water in their greywater ditch, which is not a very coyote-like thing to do. The coyotes here are leery of humans, whom they (correctly) see as a threat to their lives. This ain’t Massachusetts: mess with the pets or the chickens and you get kilt right quick. Which is why, here in the Coyote capital of the planet, we get along together real well. When I moved here there was still a bounty on them and you NEVER saw a coyote when you were on foot. That was a long time ago and they’re less leery but they’re still usually quite polite.
But like I say, it makes me wonder if we don’t have a hybrid running around. Needless to say coydogs aren’t at all uncommon and they do better in the wild than dog/dogs do but I don’t know if they’d be welcome in a wild pack. Would explain why L’s “coyote pup” is always by itself.
Had one in my back yard here in suburban Scarborough, Maine in early June.
https://isserfiq.blogspot.com/2025/06/night-time-visitor.html
We’ve had Great Danes, a Doberman, and even a couple of Bloodhounds that tried to imitate coyote when the get to yapping in the nearby wash. Funny to hear the deep voices transition from woof woof to a half arse yoopf youpf. Any chance it was a dog chasing some coyotes, or vice versa?
Had some roommates once that had one. Absolutely the smartest dog I have ever known.
Back in the 1980’s when I lived in Delta Junction Alaska I had a small recreational dog team. One of my lead dogs was half coyote, her mom was tied at the edge of a competitive musher’s dog yard because she was in heat and Mr coyote took advantage. She mostly acted as a dog. When loose in the yard she kept jumping and pouncing on the grasshoppers. When we had to disperse the team because of a change in employment she was one of two who became house dogs. The other four were given to other mushers.