Zeke and I saw this pair on the drive into work the other morning. They crossed the road in front of us about a quarter mile from the house. One looked like it might be limping, that or maybe it's just the way they lope?

A month or so back we were walking into work early one morning, really early: 5am and still dark. Around this area of the woods I could hear a pack braying off in the distance. There were a few moments of reflection as I weighed the chances of an out of shape programmer and a snarly toothed dog taking on a pack of winter-hungry coyote. Not good.

Zeke was missing a top fang when we got him, the others worn flat by too much rock retrieving as a pup. It was his lust for rocks that would do in the other fang a few years later when he surprisingly caught one in mid-air that my sis had tossed into a pond. Now he's down to two flattened bottom fangs, and one half-broken top fang to ward off whatever should come out of the woods.

I'd probably be little help, wielding the camera to take photos rather than to stave off the coyotes.