This is something that would have been amazingly cool with a video camera. Sorta. Except it was dark. And backlit from the lights on the 202. And every time something exciting happened, a cloud of dust went up. Really all I could see were blurs of dark and slightly-less dark, and hear the occasional whimper or jangle of Kila’s tags, and some more puffs of dust.

Kila spotted a coyote behind the Boulder Mtn park at the bottom of Las Sendas. Clued in to Kila’s body language, i found the grey blur moving in the open tract next to the highway, then just hung out and watched for about 15 minutes as Kila and the coyote ran and parried and did whatever it was that they were doing for quite such a long time. It never got hectic, which was weird. Kila never got bored, which was weird. The coyote never growled at Kila, nor showed its much meaner side, nor tried to lead her off, which was weird.

A couple times I whistled for Kila to come near me, just so she didn’t get too carried away or do anything stupid. I kept thinking the coyote was gone, but a short while later Kila would run out to discuss things with it further. She never got much more than 50 yards away from me, also weird that the coyote minded me so little. The entire saga was like and extended meet and greet, where no one knew who the alpha dog was. It was quite civilized really.

The only time I’d seen a coyote be that interested and that patient with Kila was the spring of ’02 after we first got her, and a large coyote persisted in following us across Longbow golf course, even when i stopped several   times and approached it menacingly. Soon after that I realized Kila was not fixed, after a dog spent several games at Uomo Donna trying to hump her, and she spotted a little on our white tile floor. Tsaina and I once tailed a coyote for a while in the riverbed behind Fort Lowell Park in Tucson, and it eventually led us right into 3 of its mates who were waiting for us.

No such thing was happening here. It was just two dogs trying to get on the same page for a very long time. Maybe the coyote was young, or was used to seeing Kila as we spot them regularly in that park, and hear the same pack howling just over our fenceline at night frequently.

This was Kila’s version of riding gnar.