Canines and Me and a Fascinating Day!

I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone reading this who knows me or my writing that I'm a dog lover.  My karma is apparently aware of it, too.  I had a very interesting Monday this week, full of canine surprises.

First, the not-so-good one.  I live in the hills of Los Angeles and I'm fully aware there are coyotes living on the mountain nearby.  I don't see them often, which is a good thing since I have small dogs, although I do hear them howling frequently, particularly when police or fire sirens are going off.  But Monday morning, after I'd already taken our dogs into the yard once, I saw a coyote in our fenced-in backyard.

It was just standing there near a fence from one neighbor's yard.  I panicked, wanting to make sure my husband didn't let our dogs outside.  Coyotes are well known for eating small pets, and I didn't want either Lexie or Mystie to become a meal.  When my husband looked out a window it squeaked while he was opening it, and the noise caused the coyote to climb over the opposite neighbor's fence.  Their dog is larger than ours but we called to warn them.  Apparently, though, the coyote left to return to his hillside.

My heart rate remained high all day, and I'm of course still scanning the yard before taking my dogs out for their usual visits and exercise.  They have me well trained so we tend to go out often.  One good thing is that I always accompany them anyway.  A nasty nesting mockingbird that acted as if she wanted to attack them a few years ago ensured that. 

Then, at dinnertime, my husband and I and our younger son went to a sandwich shop in a nearby shopping center--and I met a very nice, very astute animal lover there sitting outside with his lovely and tame pet wolf!  I write about wolves and werewolves in my Alpha Force miniseries for Harlequin Nocturne but I'd never been quite so up close and personal with a real one.  I even got to pet her.

Yes, both events happened on the same day, the potentially bad and the good.  I wrote about both on my Facebook page, too--and got a lot more comments back about the coyote than I did the wolf.

Now I need to figure out how to use that day somehow in one of my novels...

Oh, and by the way, another dog-related thing on the same day: I got my items ready for D.D. Ayres' Dog Days of Summer Giveaway event in which a group of mostly mystery writers will each be giving away substantial prizes over ten days, starting on August 21.  My day is Saturday, August 29, and among other things I'll be giving away four books, one from each of my published cozy mystery series.