Jesse is neither an aggressive dog, nor a dominant/alpha dog. He’s a medium sized, short haired happy-go-lucky dog that comes to one of the parks early each morning with his owner. He socializes with the other dogs, is happy to greet other owners, runs all over the place, and for the most part, comes when his owner calls him. But several times he has seen the coyote before his owner could leash him, and off he went. Yesterday, Jesse chased two coyotes into the bushes. Often, one of the coyotes, after being chased, will come back and stand up for itself by barking and nipping. Fortunately, no incident occurred this time, but it has in the past. Jesse once ended up with a nip on his haunches and didn’t like it — letting his owner know about it all day long. Maybe because of this previous incident, Jesse needed to show the coyotes who really was boss — I’ve been calling this “oneupmanship.” So this time, after the coyotes were well out of reach and quiet within the bushes, Jesse trotted back to their entry point into the bushes, paced back and forth, and finally pooped right there on their “doorstep”. That’ll show them!!
I discourage all dog owners from letting their dogs chase the coyote — we need to protect both the dogs and the coyotes — but it does happen sometimes. Both the coyotes and dogs reveal, by their behaviors, what they are actually thinking and how they feel.
