My Little Fraidy Dog

For the past several weeks, Brutus has been fearful of going to the bathroom in the back yard. At night, he will often come back to the patio door to get one of us to stand out in the porch and watch him go potty. It's been weird to say the least.

Then we figured it out. I was standing in the dining room one afternoon and I thought I saw a very large dog outside by the corner of our deck. After looking a little closer, I realized it wasn't a dog at all, but a very large coyote. I had heard from other neighbors that there had been a coyote in the neighborhood, but I had never seen it before and had no idea how large it was. Brutus weighs a good ninety pounds in the winter, and this guy, or gal, was just as big as he is. If I had a small dog or child, I would never leave them unattended. I'm sure that this coyote's scent is all over our back yard by now. I usually don't put Brutus on a tie anymore when I let him outside in the back, so he happily gets to do a really good job of marking all four corners of the yard, and a couple in the middle.

The other really adorable thing that he has started doing is taking a stuffed animal with him when he goes potty. I don't know if it gives him a feeling of not being alone, or if it's a peace offering to hand off to the coyote to give himself time to run, but either way, it's really cute.

Other than that, today he just had a fun time romping around in the fresh snow. It's the closest thing he's had to a bath in the past couple weeks, so, it's all good. Have a great weekend!!