Near Miss?

Gracie's life has become a bit more stressful since Frankie the puppy arrived and grew bigger than her.  Frankie doesn't realize that he is now bigger than Gracie and keeps tussling (or attacking) her as if she were one of his siblings.  In the confines of the mud room this is definitely not a good thing and Mike spends a lot of time yelling at Frankie to 'leave Gracie alone!' or separating them.  Outside it is not quite so bad.

Since Frankie is just a puppy, he gets distracted easily.  If Gracie can keep away from him long enough he will go pester another dog or go exploring on his own.  On the daily walks around the property with Mike and all the dogs, Gracie no longer strolls with the others.  As soon as Frankie starts in her direction, she runs off way ahead of Mike and the dog pack.  One of the results of this new habit is that Gracie has lost a lot of weight.

This brings us to what happened last week.  Mike was on his daily walk around the property with all the dogs and as he got deeper down the path in the woods, he could hear the neighbors dogs running a coyote.  Mike and his pack and the coyote dogs have crossed paths before and they are all friendly towards each other so that wasn't what made Mike uneasy.  It was that a coyote could consider some of our dogs a meal.  And after Gracie's weight loss, she qualifies as the smallest of our dogs.

Mike really didn't want to turn back.  The house dogs need this walk as it is their only exercise and  Frankie needs all the exercise he can get to use up his boundless energy.  However, Gracie kept getting further and further ahead and the coyote dogs sounded closer and closer so finally Mike called Gracie back which she of course didn't want to do.  Eventually, she responded and Mike actually attached her to a leash he happened to carry with him.  Just as he started going forward again they saw the coyote.  It crossed the path about fifty feet in front of Mike and Gracie.  Just where Gracie had been.

It wasn't long afterward that the coyote dogs also crossed the path chasing the coyote.  We will never know if the coyote on the run from the dogs would have been diverted as he crossed the path and gone after Gracie, a defenseless dog just standing in front of him.  We are just grateful that Mike called Gracie back when he did.

Who knew we could have so much excitement just taking a walk at the farm?