Frieda, Lenore, Izzy and Rose. The border collies always lie together, so do Lenore and Frieda. Animals like to gather with their own kind. Unlike coyotes, they get fed.

 June 8, 2009 – Warm, still.  Allergies are brutal. I am watching the Yankees again, every now and then. I took a year off but my daughter Emma has written a baseball book due out next Spring, and so I am weaving my way back in. Went to see a doctor today about my ankle – it has hurt for about 25 years, ever since a beating I took while I was a reporter,  and it finally occurred to me to get an orthotic, as doctors have been telling me to do.
  I do a lot of walking, and running around the farm, and I need to be as good to my legs as they have been to me. This podiatrist was discouraged. He told me most of his patients were unpleasant, and the insurance companies impossible, and the people in his Church political and divisive. He said a kind thing. He said seeing my name on is patient list brightened his days, which are full of discouragement and disconnection.
  We talked for a long time about change, and the need to consider it if you seem to think your life is slipping away. He said he was afraid of being bitter, and I said he was not a bitter man, but a frustrated one, and might consider altering his life, looking for people he was more comfortable with. We shook hands as I left, and he is fitting me up with a pricey but impressive looking thing to slip into my boots. It will keep me going for decades, he said.
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 My reference to my coyote research sparked an impressive wave of e-mail – you never know who is lurking out there, and there are many people intrigued by coyotes and so it was an unknowingly good move to put some into my novel. One of the many interesting e-mails I got mentioned a website in which a woman from Wyoming is keeping a regular log of her life with a border collie and a coyote pup named Charlie who was orphaned after his parents were shot for killing sheep.
  She took Charlie in.
   I am fascinated by these animals and have spent time with them and researching them. They are all around the farm, and Rose and my .22 (I fire into the air when they get too close) keep them away. Rose raises the roof when they come near and they leave. Izzy hides under the sofa, and Lenore can’t quite conceive of the notion of a coyote.
  In the novel, the border collie sneaks into the woods to observe a coyote gathering and I have been reading about these remarkably resilient and intelligent animals and went to a sort of secret coyote rescue farm (the woman who runs it keeps it a secret because her neighbors, many farmers, would not relish the idea of a coyote sanctuary in their midst, she says.)
  They are, I think, just like dogs, except they have to feed themselves and thus, attach to one another rather than humans.
  The site is an interesting look at the evolving interaction between humans and animals.