Desert Canines

Our dog bear stands on a cloudy day in McDowell Sonoran Preserve on February 3, 2023. Original: _Z723197.NEF

On Friday I wasn’t able to get my work done as far away computers weren’t working, by late afternoon I gave up and took Bear for a walk in the desert instead. Earlier on a snack break I heard howling in the distance so when he started sniffing the trail so hard I thought a pizza or a pot roast must be walking up ahead of us, I had a clue as to the real source of his interest. He was so focused on their scent I saw them before he did, I pointed his head directly at the most easily visible coyote but he didn’t pick it up until it moved slightly. Then he was transfixed watching the three of them saunter across the desert, cross the trail, and head down a game trail.

He didn’t want to move for a while, I like to believe he was reflecting on the wonder of it all but I suspect he was just hoping they’d be back. When he was finally ready to resume our walk I took him back down to where they had crossed the trail, if I hadn’t had a good hold on his leash the coyote pack might have gained a new member.

I was thankful they each judged each other not to be a threat, he far outweighs them but he stayed quiet and relaxed and once they sized him up they went about business as normal. We resumed our now familiar loop and towards the end with sunset approaching on this cloudy and comfortable day, I stopped him for this picture. Which I realized later is almost identical to one I posted in December when we first discovered this trail.

Leave a comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: