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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On 11/15/06, EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > FWIW I did get a shot at a fox calmly walking down our driveway with
> > a chicken in it's mouth.
I wish I had a video of the coyote in the front yard with the red
star, or it may have been a Rhode Island red,  in her mouth. I'm
pretty sure the coyote was a nursing female with pups in the woods
west of me. She looked me right in the eye and casually loped to stage
left where she cleared two 4-foot woven wire fences as if they weren't
there. Later she came back for the 30 lb turkey that she'd killed
earlier and cleared the fence wiith him in her jaws. I really do need
to get electric fence back up.

That was when I decided to get another livestock dog. Louie has been a
great success in many ways. Mornings, if I get up early enough, I can
see him patrolling the perimeter (later, he's at the front door
waiting for treats).

He's still not clear on the issue of not eating the chickens (he's
never killed indiscriminately, just here and there for lunch), but
he's getting there. Anatolians are amazingly hard-headed and stubborn,
but they understand berserk. I can do a good berserk (sometimes even
on humans but I try to limit that these days).

For Bev's benefit, back when I had dogs out and about all over the
place, I never had predation problems (aside from moles, which have
been stopped in their tracks by the BCs). In my experience, a good
charge on the electric fence backs up the dogs tremendously. That
coyote might not have even tried to clear the fence if there had been
a hot wire there.

Marie