Rita and the Coyotes

A couple of nights ago Vince took Rita out before we went to bed and they were right back in the house. He said the coyotes sounded really close and it scared her so she turned around and ran back inside. She only goes out on a leash (day or night) but she knows her way back to the house.

That made me think about when she first showed up here. She wasn’t blind til a couple of years after she had been here so thank goodness, she could still see while she was living in the woods. She lived out in the woods for at least two weeks. I came home from town one day and she was up around the smoker scrounging for something to eat but when I drove up, she ran off. She went down the driveway but sat down in the curve – far enough away that I could barely see her but she watched me. I put a bowl of food out but I was leaving the next day to go to Missouri. I told Vince that I had seen a chihuahua outside. He saw her a couple of times and put more food and water out for her. He tried to lure her close enough to him that he could catch her but that didn’t work. He finally set a trap (the kind that doesn’t hurt them) and caught her in that. We later learned that she had been eating acorns . . it was in October. We found her little stashes of acorns several places around the yard and even after she had sufficient food at home, she still looked for acorns when we went outside.

Vince wasn’t sure how Speck would get along with her. He was a bit grumpy . . no, he was a whole lot grumpy, so Vince fixed Rita a bed outside on the porch. She slept in it every night and was happy to see Vince the next morning. He’d go to work and come home and there she was, waiting for him. We had us a chihuahua. When I came back from MO, I told him . . we can’t leave her outside! So we brought her in and Speck seemed to like her . . as much as he liked anyone, so she became an inside dog but she had some horrible bathroom manners. If this house would’ve had carpet, she would NOT have stayed long. We worked through it and she’s now very dependable. I trust her completely in the house.

She hadn’t been here long – probably 4 or 5 weeks and it was Thanksgiving. We had Thanksgiving with friends . . at their house and I asked for the turkey carcass to make turkey bone soup. The lady gave it to me and there was still a lot of meat left on it so Vince sat down at the table, pulled all the meat off the bones and had it piled up on a plate. I took the carcass and began to boil it but we both walked outside for something and Vince hadn’t pushed his chair all the way in. We came in the house and Rita had eaten about half the turkey off the plate . . on the table! We learned to push our chairs all the way under the table to keep her from getting on the table. She was worse than a cat!

Back to my story about the coyotes . . I wonder if dogs just automatically know the sound of a coyote and know to get to a safe spot. You know she heard them every single night when she was living in the woods and was probably scared to death! The sound of the coyotes never seemed to bother Speck but he had lost a lot of his hearing by the time we moved here. He was completely deaf for at least a year or so before he passed away.

It makes me sad to think about Rita living out in the woods being scared, searching for food and water but I’m happy she found us! She’s such a sweet dog, especially for being a chihuahua. She never growls or barks at anyone and any time someone comes here, she’s 100% sure they’re here to see her. We love her!