All Coy-Dogs Go To Heaven

Sad news: Freckles, the original Blonde Coyote – the inspiration for the name of this blog – is gone. I don’t know details about what happened. She was found in abdominal distress and the emergency vet determined she needed to be put down. She was 10 years old and full of life on our last hike together in April. I don’t want to think about the desert without that magnificent coy-dog glowing in the Sun.

Freckles was a coyote hybrid, equal parts sweet and smart, shy and skittish. She wasn’t mine, but we hiked hundreds of miles together and she would have followed me to the ends of the Earth. Hiking with Freckles was an exercise in trust: she was stone cold deaf and entirely untrained. I couldn’t tell her what to do; she did what she did because she wanted to. Having her as an ally– being judged…