Wait, Did I Just Offer Liver Treats To...

My friends love this story.  So do my co-workers.  They say it sums up my approach to life, especially animal welfare, really well.  Therefore I have decided to share my humiliation for the world’s amusement and enlightenment into the kind of soul I am. 

Let me set the scene.  I love rescuing animals.  In my car I keep a little “animal rescue” kit next to my first aid kit for work.  It includes liver treats, one of those slip leashes they use at animal shelters that’s easy to drop over a nervous dog’s head, a bottle of water and a water dish, a heavy blanket, and the phone number for almost every emergency animal hospital, shelter, and rescue in town.  Once I rescued a muddy black lab as I drove home around midnight.  She was running in the shadows and I was terrified she’d get hit by a car so I stopped.  The pretty girl happily jumped into my Jeep, got muddy prints all over the seats, and was thankfully micro chipped, identified at the local emergency hospital, and home to her family before dawn. 

Now a break for a friendly message from your local crazy animal person:  Micro chip your pets!  Collars come off.  Every dog I’ve rescued who has had a micro chip has been safely returned home.  A collar with a tag and a phone number does always help too!  But a dog can’t lose their micro chip!

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog... 

With the insight that I stop for stray and distressed dogs at all hours of the day and night let me get on with the story. 

It happened on a chilly winter morning in Tucson an hour or so before the sunrise when everything remains dark and still and there is very little traffic on the roads.  I was heading home from the outskirts of town where the natural world starts to meld into the human world and just getting back into civilization (i.e. I was driving by a Circle K gas station).  What did I behold in the glowing lights of the Circle K, running scared and frightened along the road towards the darkness beyond, but a poor bedraggled dog.  It looked skinny.  It looked hungry.  I swung my car around and pulled up as close to the dog as possible then slowed.  You have to be careful when approaching a stray dog not to drive them into a more dangerous situation.  It’s best to come up on them slowly and always put your car between them and the road so as to drive them away from any traffic and onto a sidewalk or into the weeds. 

The dog stopped then slunk closer to the edge of the road.  Its eyes glowed briefly in some passing headlights.  

I hopped out grabbing a handful of liver treats and the slip-leash then crouched down making little clicking noises with my tongue. 

“Here puppy.  Here baby. You’re okay.  Smell the liver treats.  Come here baby.”  It is hard NOT to smell the liver treats.  That’s why I carry them.  They reek!  My dogs think they are the BEST-THING-EVER.  Although my Little Girls think lots of things are the BEST-THING-EVER.  But anyways….

I continued talking to the dog.  It seems to work well with dogs in general.  Talking lets them know where you are at all times.  If you are making soft noises they don’t think you are trying to sneak up on them, and some of them, who have lived with people, like the sound of a quiet voice.  “Hey pup.  You look like you haven’t eaten in a while huh? I’ve got water in my car.  Are you thirsty?” 

Inching closer I stayed in my oh-so-sexy half-squat duck-position rescue-dog thingy stance trying to appear non- threatening.  Let me also say that I had my eyes downcast so as not to meet the dog’s eyes because meeting a dog’s eyes can be seen as aggression.  This is my explanation for why, as I inched forward with a hand of odoriferous liver treats towards the crouched shape frozen in the shadowy weeds, that I didn’t put things together right away.

Wait a minute.  Dogs’ eyes don’t glow in headlights.  Flick of my eyes up to glance at the “dog.” 

Look down, try and process where I’ve seen that type of silhouette before. 

Look up.  

Gulp. 

I had duck-walk-crouched my way within about two feet of nothing more or less than a real life Coyote, all the while holding my hand outstretched with a pile of meat-smelling treats.   

So I did what any sane person would do.  (Not like a sane person would have gotten themselves into this position to begin with.) I backwards-duck-walked about a yard away, then slowly stood up and backed up to my car, quietly got in, put the treats away, closed the door, put the leash away, wiped my hand down to get the meat-liver stench off, and drove off to let the Coyote return to the wild in peace.  And swore never to tell anyone what had happened. 

Tada!  

Now you know the story of how Krista attempted to lure a Coyote into her car to "rescue" it from the mean streets of Tucson.  Yeah.  Ask me about my embarrassing cell phone moment sometime... I swore I'd never tell anyone that story too...